


What Keep Us Together

by thatwonderland



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Blood and Violence, Cheryl and Archie are actually siblings they just don't know it, Enemies to Lovers, Epic Friendships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/F, Gore, Inspired by The Walking Dead, Jason is a kid, Slow Burn, Survival, don't try to change my mind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:20:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26446981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatwonderland/pseuds/thatwonderland
Summary: It’s been fourteen months, three weeks and two days since everything went to shit.The world is in chaos, the undead walk the earth, there is no government, no laws. People do whatever they want, using all means necessary to achieve it.It's war, everyone for themselves.ORThe Choni Zombie-Apocalypse AU that nobody asked for, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
Relationships: Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Comments: 125
Kudos: 156





	1. it won't be today

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there :) so, honestly, this is just my two current obsessions smashed together in a fic  
> This is inspired by The Walking Dead, but you don't need to have watched the show or know anything at all of it to understand this, except maybe that they call zombies 'walkers' most of the time.  
> Hope you like it!

_"Where death follows, there's life. When darkness surrounds you in a world of chaos, search and you'll eventually find the light.”_   
_-Lee Argus_

The sun provides more than enough of a yellow glow for Toni to see the streets are clear of any other being, alive or not. Watching everything around her, most stores have already been emptied. All of the windows are shattered; pieces of glass litter the floor. The wall is now covered in dirt and smeared with blood. Those that aren’t like that usually means there’re walkers inside and the risk would be too much in trying to get in.

There’re also a few cars lying around, and judging by the dust they have been sat in that position a while. She begins to rummage through some of them looking for anything that would help surviving just that much longer. Mostly just looking for medicine or food. Out of the five cars she manages to look into, she could find two tins of fruit and one bar of chocolate. All expired. But it’s always like this, and way better than nothing.

Returning to her original path, Toni turns a corner into a small alley where she knows will lead to the side of the building she’s looking for.

She quickly makes her way to the end of the alley, there’s a grid made of aluminum blocking the passage that led to the side of the local school grounds of a small town. She doesn’t really remember the name of this town, but she knows is somewhere in Florida.

It’s a fairly short climb, so Toni grabs her mostly empty backpack – save for the things she took from the cars outside and two flares – and throws it to the other side. She carefully climbs over the fence, trying to make as little noise as possible, once on top she slides her right leg over, swinging her body, then the left leg before scaling down, smoothly landing on the ground she retrieves her backpack back to her shoulders.

The air is cold and dry as she walks around to the front of the building. Slowly turning the corner, she looks around for any imminent danger. A few feet away from her, a figure that looks like it once was a teenager lurches painfully slow across the pavement in the opposite direction of her. It doesn’t have an arm, and the bicep, probably after a long time of exposure, had worn through. Tendons and bits of gray flesh lay exposed as the splintered, frayed bone indelicately split the skin and had torturously stabbed outward into the open air. It was black and infected, exposed to the elements. The air surrounding the walker was of putrid stench. Like a month old rain water neglected to sit in the bottom of a trash can.

Drawing her knife out of the sheath on her waistband, she takes a few steps towards it, but then stops. It isn’t worth it. Deciding to let it be, the walker is walking away from her anyway, she turns around looking for a way to get into the school.

Scanning the front of the building, the main doors are looked, a heavy looking padlock around it. There’re some windows and one of them quickly got her attention, it’s broken. Walking over to it, she peers into the window, looking around the room inside and listening for any sound but it seems empty. Toni tries to clean the little pieces of broken glass from the windowsill, trying not to attract the armless walker still unaware of her presence with the noise, before sitting on it and moving her legs to the inside of the room.

The room is definitely the front office, she walks to the counter, still holding the knife just in case. She looks behind it and still nothing, just a lot of papers scattered on the floor. The door is slightly ajar so she walks over there and peeks outside. The halls are clear of anyone or anything moving. Her courage bolstered by its emptiness, she steps out into the hall.

The place is exactly what one would expect of an abandoned school – desks are all over the hall, a lot of lockers are open, even a smashed computer on the floor – still walking ahead, she looks for any sign on the walls to guide her where she needed to go. Finally at the end of the hall, she can see the bottom of the stairs and right beside it there’s what looks like a sign listing the floors.

She walks up to it, and her eyes go through what’s written there until she finds it. _Infirmary 3 rd floor._ Toni looks up at the stairs and sighs, although down here is clear, there’s a great chance she’ll find walkers up there. She brings her hand to the back of her waistband to make sure she still had her gun there; she picks it up, glancing at the chamber to see how many bullets are there. _Six_. Latching it back, she shoves it in the waistband of her pants again. She knows not to waste it, and gunshots would attract any walkers that would hear it toward her. If she can avoid it, she will.

Grasping her knife more firmly, she strengthens her spine and starts moving slowly up the stairs.

The climb from the 1st to the 2nd floor goes smoothly, she looks around the open area of this floor and a few feet away from her - and the opening to the second flight of stairs at her right - there’s three walkers standing, none of them are looking at her direction and don’t seem to have notice her. Walking more carefully than ever, she goes up the stairs leading to the 3rd floor.

When she gets to the landing of the stairs she suddenly stops. A low guttural growl rises to her ears pretty much vibrates from the ground. A figure standing on the floor against one of the walls of the landing pitches forward. Its arms outstretched towards her, Toni quickly draws her knife out and yanks it into the walker’s brain silencing it, removing the knife of its head after. Before she can sigh in relief she hears footsteps coming from the second floor, followed by grunts and snarls from more than one creature. _Oh no_.

Making her way around the dead walker at her feet, she starts running up the rest of the way to the 3rd floor. She finds another walker at the top of the stairs, it stumbles toward her, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to take a few step back. She tries to balance herself against the bannister; she pushes the walker off her and stabs it in the head. In doing so, the walker falls off balance and starts rolling down the stairs with her knife still stuck in its skull. _Shit_.

She can’t go back; the walkers from the 2nd floor are already climbing up. She turns around and starts running. She turns the corner into a hallway and stops short, five walkers are fatter down the hall alarmed by the sound of her boots and for sure already running after her, not that she stays to confirm. Toni turns around fast and runs through another hallway. One walker shows up in front of her out of nowhere, maybe from some classroom with an open door – she knows she can’t turn back, she quickly grabs her gun from her waistband, pointing at its head, she fires the first shot.

Wincing in pain at the sound of the gunshot, she continues to run, jumping the dead walker on the floor before looking for the right door. Two more walkers appear in front of her and she shoots the nearest one, pushing its body towards the other. Which gets both of them out of her way.

The sound of her heart beating fast is almost as loud as the groans and snarls of the creatures behind her, the latter is proving itself very hard to ignore. Toni doesn’t know how long she can keep running. Her thighs are starting to ache, each breath becoming more difficult to take, and the pain in her right side like a knife twisting every time her boots thud against the hard floor, sure that if she stop, there’s nothing behind her but a fight she won’t win. Toni is mentally begging that one of the three doors by the end of the hall is the infirmary, though she would get in any door now just to get away from the walkers. Her fingers are almost white from how hard she’s gripping the gun in her hand, she never really liked carrying a gun but it’s a needed last resource, like when you stupidly lose your knife to a dead walker.

Toni abruptly stops at one of the doors, which makes her slide across the dusty floor. She forces the knob, but it doesn’t turn, which makes her despair increase even more. Three figures run in front of their group of nearly a dozen walkers, as far as she can see in the few seconds she dares to look. The first, that once was a short, pale man wearing what it looked like a dirty janitor uniform, had half of its face missing, bones on display. The other figures were women: one taller, with white hair and a shattered jaw, and the other, a brunette with a ripped abdomen.

Her stomach churns, not so much because of the creatures' condition, but because they’re getting closer and closer. Toni runs towards the other door and again the handle doesn’t turn. The pairs of whitish eyes are glazed at her, like hungry starving animals, about to attack their prey.

“Shit!” she whimpers.

The other door is at the end of the corridor. The three figures that are approaching, with the characteristic clumsy step and teeth chattering, are less than ten feet away from her. Toni takes aim at the first one, closer to her and pulls the trigger. A hole opens in the skull of the walker causing a dark, almost black, blood to spread on the wall near it. Toni runs towards the last door. Beside the door is a sign written _INFIRMARY._ Yes.

Right in front of this door is another corridor and the sound of her boots, and undoubtfully the gun shot, alarms five more creatures that were unaware of her presence until that moment. The walkers turn and start running towards her, looking starving. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Toni curses desperately, turning the knob of the last door. A brief sigh of relief comes out of her lips when the door opens. Toni doesn't think twice before entering the room and trying to shut the door as quickly as possible. The groans increase as the first bodies force the door, trying to open it. Toni pushes harder, using the rest of the energy that still exists in her tired muscles. “Come on!” she growls, trying to keep her feet from sliding on the floor.

Suddenly there’s a disgusting looking hand inches from her face, that manage to sneak through the door still a little ajar. Jerking her head back, she tries to think fast. She passed the gun from her right hand to the left, securing it in the best possible way in her non-dominant hand and places the barrel between the door and the door frame aiming at the nearest walker and fires.

The hand falls behind and with a lot of effort, Toni finally manages to close the door, turning the lock. She leans against the cold wood and takes a deep breath, trying to control her breathing and heartbeat. _Fuck! This was really not supposed to happen,_ she thinks to herself, wanting to punch something in her frustration, the plan is to get in and out without too much trouble.

She blinks a few times to get used to the complete darkness and searches for the small flashlight in her jacket pocket. She lights it up, illuminating the place she almost died looking for. The infirmary looks dusty, not untouched but she can see it isn’t empty either. At least this isn’t for nothing.

Toni wipes the excess sweat on her forehead and starts walking, ignoring the noises of the wood cracking because of the walkers’ punches and scratches on the other side of the door; she knows it’s just a matter of time until they manage come in. Stretching out she grabs her backpack and opens it, looking in drawers and cabinets for any medicine and supplies she could find, and starts to dump into it. “Next time don't offer to come alone, you idiot.” she whispers to herself, putting the backpack on her shoulders again after searching the place. Toni takes out her gun and checks how many bullets are left.

Just two. _Great._

The flashlight in her left hand and the gun in her right, Toni starts looking for another way out of the room. She finds a glass door to her right, but hesitates for a few seconds, studying behind the smoked glass if there’re any walkers on the other side, two hands punching the glass from the other side causes her the jump and nearly fall backwards.

“Fuck!” Toni curses under her breath, pressing her hand to her heart, trying to make it slow down. She eyes the walker on the other side, only being able to see its silhouette. “Bitch.”

She shakes her head, looking around the room again she sees another door at the far end of the room and walks to it. She puts the flashlight away and turns the handle of the door slowly, raised gun pointed at the other side. The afternoon sun almost blinds her as the door opens. Blinking her eyes repeatedly until they adjust to the clarity, she notices that she’s on a long balcony at the front of the building, where thankfully there isn’t any walker. However, the only problem is that there’s no way out, but the door she just used.

Toni scans the side of the building, looking for any emergency exit. She sees a ladder on the left side and looks down to see that her only escape would lead to the parking lot. The only visible walkers that roamed the cold streets are right behind a large fence that separates them from the local school. She puts her gun on the waistband of her pants and climbs over the edge, stretching her arm as far as she could to reach the stairs. She tosses her body and almost slips when holding the cold metal of the stairs. She carefully descends each step and the silence, in addition to the weak grunts she left behind, make her even more anxious. When she reaches the last step, she realizes that she’s still far from the ground, so she forces the structure downwards, but it doesn't even move. The cold and rain probably had made its number on the metal and now it’s stuck.

With a curse coming out of Toni’s lips, she looks down and calculates that it would be a fall fifteen feet maybe. Yeah… no, thanks.

But when she is about to go back and look for another way out, already climbing some steps, the loud noise of glass breaking echoes. The groans are angrier and seconds later she sees more than one walker hanging on the porch, trying to reach her. Her heart is racing and again, unsuccessfully, she tries to force the stairs down.

A figure passes by her left shoulder and she hears the sound of the body crashing on the floor beneath her. They would fall on her head at any moment. Toni swallows a whimper and tries to get ready. Taking a deep breath, she counts to three before releasing the metal of the stairs. She tries to keep her mouth shut as she falls but a cry of pain manages to come out of her lips when her ankle comes in contact with the cold floor. The pain of the possible fracture burns through her body. Tears well up in her eyes as she sighs in pain, knowing she had to get out of there as fast as possible. Toni is startled when another walker falls beside her. She gets up trying, unsuccessfully, to support her right foot on the floor. As she stands upright again, she hears a groan close to her ear and a cold, skeletal hand grasp her black jacket.

The stink of putrid flesh and mold enters her nostrils as she stares at the shattered face of a walker that lacked an arm. The creature put its weight on her, making her fall from the lack of support on her foot, her gun slipping out of her hand and sliding beside her head. Toni grabs the walker's only arm and neck as it tries to bite any piece of her face. Its rotten teeth and white eyes feeding her despair. She starts struggling more desperately, trying to get rid of it. She mentally cursed herself, she should’ve killed this bastard when she got there.

She lets go of its arm and, with a trembling hand, starts to fumble for the gun beside her, for some agonizing seconds she can’t feel anything until she closes her hand around the handle. The walker is already winning the fight, forcing its face down to taste the flesh of her shoulder when Toni raises the gun to the side of its head and pulls the trigger. The side of the creature's head explodes and blood and parts of the brain splashes down on the floor and on some parts of her face. She closes her eyes and mouth automatically, avoiding contact with that disgusting goo.

She rolls the dead weight onto her side, stunned for a few seconds by the sound of the gunshot close to her ears.

She wipes the goo off her face with the hem of her shirt and tries to stand up. It's then, when she looks up, her heartbeat increasing even more, she sees a small herd of probably about twenty walkers pushing hard on some part of the fence that’s almost giving way. The parts at the bottom of the fence are starting to dent because of the sheer number of walkers forcing it.

“Are you fucking kidding me!?” her voice comes out as a whisper. She stares at it, paralyzed in the same place.

Eventually she snaps out of it and picks up the gun from the floor and tries to get up, putting the weight on just one leg. However, before she can turn around she feels something cold at the back of her head.

“Give me your gun.” the sound of a girl’s voice reach her ears, sounding demanding. Toni closes her eyes - _shit!_ She raises both of her hands to each side of her head. When she turns towards the girl’s direction, she comes face to face with the barrel of a pistol pointing to the middle of her head.

“Give me the gun, now!” the girl looks angry as she repeats herself, apparently out of patience. A pair of brown eyes stares at the gun that’s still in Toni’s right hand. She’s a redhead and taller than her by a few inches. Toni realizes that maybe she spent a lot of time staring at the girl because she speaks again much louder.

"Didn't you hear me?" Toni blinks a few times, trying to alert her brain clouded by adrenaline.

Toni basically growls, even though she knows a bullet wouldn't make a difference at that moment _._ She slowly hands the girl her gun, who took it and put it on the back of her jeans.

“If you kill me, they'll come after you because of the noise.” Toni tries to warn her, pointing her head at the group of walkers behind her that increasingly crumple the fence.

"They will come either way, because you were stupid enough to fire before and attract them" the girl says still pointing the gun at her head. She swallows several times, making her nervousness clear "Give me your backpack."

“Come on” she says, staring at her eyes again. “Look, I went through a lot of trouble to get it.”

“I don’t care.”

“I have someone who needs what’s in this backpack.” Toni tries again, almost pleading.

“I said I don’t give a shit,” she snaps, squeezing the gun even more in her hand. “Now give me the backpack!”

“Alright, alright…” Toni growls, removing the shoulder straps and passing the backpack to the girl’s hand that isn’t holding the gun. She takes it and puts it on one shoulder. She then begins to take small, fearful steps backwards, still staring at her.

"You're not going to leave me here without a weapon, are you?" Toni says louder, looking back and seeing the fence about to give in, "How am I going to defend myself against them like this?!" she asks, pointing at her ankle.

“Good luck!” the redhead says, shrugging.

The noise of the fence giving way makes her look back again and see the herd getting rid of it and running towards them. She could have sworn that the one that led the horde smiles at her, as if it’s watching a great meal about to be eaten. Toni looks ahead again and the girl is gone. “Oh fuck, fuck,” she cries, starting to run as fast as she can, but her right ankle won’t let her.

She tries to support her injured foot on the floor to gain more speed, but the pain is almost unbearable. Her heart is beating so fast that she’s afraid she’s going to have a heart attack. Her lungs burn with fresh air and the muscles on her right leg become more and more tense. Toni is looking everywhere for a way out, but her brain, flooded with fear, isn’t working. She looks back and sees the herd already much closer. Her eyes water, imagining that this will most definitely be the end of her.

She turns a corner between the school buildings and feels a strong tug on her jacket, pushing her against the brick wall. Dreading seeing the face of the walker about to kill her, she closes her eyes, waiting for the pain of her skin being torn. However, instead, she feels a warm hand cover her mouth, so she opens her eyes to see that pair of brown eyes, almost black, staring at her again.

"Run as fast as you can!" she orders, pulling Toni's right arm over her shoulder to help with the weight of her body. Toni nods and they start running down the alley. It’s an awkward position since this girl is way taller than her, she have to bend down a little to support Toni, but they manage.

She looks back and sees the walkers struggling to get in the alley, but soon the hungrier ones won the front. Toni is going faster than before, but it still isn't enough. The girl is panting and quickly studying the directions they could take after reaching the end of the alley.

“Come on… anything.” She mutters under her breath.

The redhead then pulls her toward a door that led inside the school again and they go through it. Stopping for just one moment to lock the door behind them, hoping it would delay them for some time. They start running towards a series of other corridors that will probably take them to the far side of the school, passing through a lot of desks and chairs that had been throwed across the hall. The girl raises her gun and shoots a walker that appears out of nowhere in front of them. The blood splashes on the white wall behind it.

Every ten seconds Toni looks back, just to check the distance of the herd. A sigh of relief leaves her lips when she loses sight of them, after turning into another corner. However, the seconds of relief are interrupted by the cold chill that cuts through her body. They stop running abruptly.

The good news is that the herd on their backs is out of sight but for sure still there and making their way towards them. The bad news is that a smaller one, but so much closer, is waiting for them at the end of the hallway, about twenty seconds away.

They’re cornered.

"There." the redhead’s voice comes out as a whisper. Toni looks over to where she’s pointing and sees an old wooden door. The girl pulls her by the jacket until they reach the door.

_Fifteen seconds_

She forces the door and whimpers when it doesn’t open. Toni just stares at the walkers approaching quickly. She hears the girl throw her body against the door to try to open it.

Accidentally supporting her injured foot on the ground, she hisses in pain and looks down at it. But something catches her eyes right beside the other girl’s feet. A key.

Praying to whoever is listening that this key will open the door, she bends down and picks it up, forcing it on the girl’s hand. She looks back to the walkers fearing her life.

_Ten seconds_

She hears the key being turned, the doorknob being forced.

_Five seconds_

Toni is already shuddering in disgust at the repugnant smell wafting from them. Two walkers led and looked like office workers, their clothes, which were once considered formal, are torn and full of blood. Their arms are already stretched to try to grab her when she feels a pair of hands pulling on her jacket and throwing her into a stuffy room. Staggering, she can see the girl quickly closing the door and locking it up again. The grunts intensifying outside.

The only light illuminating the room is coming from the small high window on the wall. The place is empty and dusty, but the shelves look newer than the rest of the school. With the adrenaline slowly fading, the pain in her ankle doubles. Toni leans against a wall, listening to the creatures' nails scraping the old wooden door outside. Her knees go weak, so she slides down the wall until she’s sitting on the floor.

Toni would not cry. _No way_. Much less in front of this girl she just met who stole from her. She’s looking for something in the room, but when she confirms that it’s really empty, she swears under her breath. Toni gets her jeans up on her right leg and sees a swelling forming and red spots on her ankle. She’ll limp for some weeks, at best.

They’re silent for long minutes, each facing a corner of the room. Only the walkers' growls echoed. Hearing them is no longer so strange after months of that in this pandemic. An idea comes to Toni's mind and she puts her hand in the inside of her jacket. The redhead quickly looks up at her, reaching for the gun.

"Calm down, Red..." Toni whispers, removing her hand from the jacket holding a walkie talkie this time.

The girl hesitates for a few seconds and let go of the gun, leaving it in her waistband. Only then does Toni have the opportunity to study her face. Her features are young, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, but because of the tiredness of living in the world today, she seemed older. There’re a few scratches on her chin and neck and her red hair is long, reaching the middle of her back. What Toni hadn’t noticed is that the girl carries a bow across her chest and a quiver full of arrows on her back. _How did I not notice this before?!_

Shaking her head, she turns her attention back to the device in her hands, Toni tests the radio transceiver to see if it’s still working even after her fall. "Someone...?" she whispers, pressing the button to speak. She releases the button and waits for a response for a few seconds before trying again. "Anyone listening?" the only answer is the wheezing of the device, making it clear that she’s talking to herself.

"It won't work," the girl whispers, and Toni hears the disappointment in her voice. "You should have tried that before you fell of the damn building."

“It’s still working, they just aren’t answering.” Toni frowns. "Were you watching me?"

"How could I not?" she snarls, "You caught the attention of twenty zombies with the shots inside the school. I barely had time to get in before I was attacked by two! Don't you know how to use a weapon that doesn’t attract anyone within 1 mile?"

"If I had one, I would have used it," she replies, still trying to whisper, "But it got stuck inside a walker's head when I got in."

“Walker?" she asks sarcastically, "Is that what you call these things?"

"Just felt stupid calling them zombies.” Toni murmured, still trying to make the people on the other side answer her call.

The girl shrugs “It’s what they are.”

Toni ignores her, trying to communicate again through the radio. Nothing. Nobody answers and it’s already starting to worry her. Did something happen to them? She scans her ankle again and winces. The swelling is getting worse.

“The sun will set in a few hours...” the redhead whispered, standing on her tiptoes by the high window to watch the other side.

“I need the backpack.” Toni says to her, pointing at the bag with her head.

“No!” she replies, looking back at her. “You won't have it back.”

“I just need something from it,” she snaps back, “How do you think I'm going to run with this getting worse? There’s a first aid kit I found in the infirmary here. Just give me the instant cold pack.”

The girl studies her for a few seconds and sighs heavily, starting to open the backpack. She searches through the belongings and takes the first aid kit, looking for the cold pack. When she finds it, she throws it Toni’s way.

She removes her boot and squeezes the cold pack to activate before shaking it and pressing the thing to her ankle. The cool will help soothe the pain and she sighs in relief when it does. Arranging the cold pack a little better, she puts the boot again with the laces barely tied to hold the pack between her skin and the boot.

“So what's your plan now?” she asks furiously.

The girl, who was previously looking through the window again, turns around eyeing her angrily.

“My plan now?” she retorts, “My plan was to get out of this place with this backpack, but my damn conscience didn't let me and I stayed to save your life! That's not enough?”

She stares the redhead for a few seconds then scoffs. _If she wants to hear a thank you, it won't be today_.

“My life is not saved!” Toni replies, using the wall to stand up with some difficulty. Yelling at this girl isn’t going to help, taking a deep breath she tries to calm down. “We just need to think, the only thing I want now to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“At least we can agree on that.” She whispers, a huffed laugh leaving her lips. Toni rolls her eyes, her dislike for that woman only increasing. The girl adds “But it’ll be impossible now with a dozen zombies outside. We can wait for the night and-”

“And wander in the dark? Is that your big plan?” she asks, sarcastically. “We need to distract them with something!” She continues.

“Maybe a live bait? How about we use you?” she offers, faking a sweet smile, “I'm sorry. Go on with your incredible plan.” she gestures with her hand to Toni.

“I have two flares in my backpack.” Toni rolls her eyes.

“How are we going to throw them?”

“I’m pretty sure you can go through that window easily.” she says, pointing to the opening on the wall a little above their heads. She walks, limping, to the window and stands on her tip toes to analyze the outside. It seems to be a part of the parking lot free of walkers.

“You go around and get into the building through another door or window and throw the flares in the opposite direction of that hallway, opening the path for me.”

Toni looks at the girl and sees that she is staring at her with an expression that Toni don’t know how to read. “What makes you think I'll come back to help you?” she asks.

Toni swallows thickly. “Well I don’t know, but it's a good chance.” she replies, trying not to appear weak or afraid. “But if you don't want to do that, I'll do it another way.”

“Oh really?” she asks, crossing her arms in front of her body. “With your foot like that?”

“You know what?” She snarls, walking back to the wall far away from her, “I don't know you and you just complicated my life even more the minute I met you. You pointed a fucking gun at my head and stole my things. You-”

“Welcome to the world today, honey.” The girl interrupts her, calmly. “You should be used to it by now.”

“Keep the damn backpack and the gun” she huffs, swallowing the lump in her throat. “I just want to go back to my group!”

They’re silent for a few minutes, Toni just realizing what she said. The girl knows she have someone on the other side of the walkie talkie she is trying to contact, but she just let it slip she’s in a group. A group usually means a camp, even if that isn’t exactly true for her, assumption is a thing. Toni closes her eyes in dread. She’s probably part of another one; her clothes aren’t so bad like those of a person who wanders around alone.

Silence reigns while the girl rummages through the backpack. Millions of situations are going through Toni’s mind. What if she and her group follow her and find their hiding place? What if they plunder and kill them? What if she leaves Toni in this _fucking_ school to die?

“Relax…” the redhead’s voice takes her away from her thoughts.

She looks at Toni quickly as if she knows what she is thinking. “When I knock on the door three times it’s because the path is clear.” she says that while putting the two flares on the waistband of her pants, leaving Toni’s gun on a table before going back to stand below the window.

Toni drags her eyes from the gun back to the taller girl who is looking at her with a exasperate look on her face “Well, won't you help me?” she asks, showing that she’ll need an impulse to climb the window.

Toni walks over the few steps separating them and the girl arches an eyebrow when she stops in front of her. For the first time looking at her from this up close. _God! She’s really beautiful._ Oh no, don’t even go there. Let’s just get out of here, so she doesn’t have to see this pretty thief’s face ever again.

She makes her hands available for the redhead to use as an impulse. She puts her right foot on them and her hands on both of her shoulders. Toni lifts it up with an effort. The girl gracefully goes through the opening head first and pushes herself until she is sitting on the windowsill, without letting her bow and quiver get caught on the window edge. From this position only her legs are on display, right in front of Toni’s face and she couldn’t help but look at them. _Jeez, stop it, don’t be creepy!_ Averting her eyes, she shakes her head to get rid of her thoughts, letting out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding.

Seconds later the girl releases the window and disappears from Toni’s view. Appreciating the few moments of quiet and solitude, she looks around the room again, walking over to the table where the redhead had left her gun, but noticing another thing on the floor sitting beside it. Her backpack. She takes it and throws it over her shoulders, placing it on her back again. Toni frowns. Has she left it on purpose?

It seems like hours passing while she waits for some sign from the other girl _. I knew it, she abandoned me._ Pacing around the room, which turns out to be a bad idea now her ankle is hurting again, she takes deep breaths. Okay, calm down. She left the bag here, she’ll come back. That’s easier said than done, she’s already formulating a plan to try and go through that window as well, it would be nearly impossible though. There’s nothing there she could use to get to window, the only table looked heavy as hell and it would make a really loud noise even if she could drag it under the window.

Lost in her mind she almost doesn’t hear when the three knocks on the door echo seconds later. She quickly turns the key and the doorknob and comes face to face with the redhead. Toni can barely see the brown in her eyes, pupils dilated by adrenaline. Her clothes are now stained with dark blood and she’s putting her bow across her chest and back again.

Toni looks to the side and sees the walkers at the end of the corridor, checking what the two flags appeared to be. So, trying to make as little noise as possible, they start walking fast in the opposite direction. Limping, Toni trying her best not to whimper in pain, but it’s almost impossible.

Finally, they reach a door with a sigh above it, written _Emergency Exit._ The redhead opens the door and Toni silently goes through it, the late afternoon sunlight illuminating this part of the parking lot. Looking around, Toni immediately stops short when she sees five walkers devouring something, an animal or a person, she really didn’t want to know what it is. Their faces and hands smeared with blood while they fight over it.

She looks at the girl behind her, bringing her index finger to her mouth, gesturing to keep quiet. She nods, looking at the walkers as well, before pointing at the heavy-looking gates in the opposite direction, – which had probably been used at the beginning of the epidemic to prevent walkers from entering the school, clearly that didn’t work – signalizing the way they’ll get out of there.

Suddenly, while they slowly close the door behind them, she hears a piercing broken sound coming through her jacket.

“Toni?” a male voice echoes amid the wheezing sound.

Her heart stops beating for a few seconds while desperately trying to search for the walkie talkie.

“Are you there? Toni?” the voice asks again.

“Oh my God!” the taller girl snarls, “Turn that off, you idiot!”

But it’s already too late, she barely has time to grab the thing when the five walkers turn around, staring at them. The creatures get up and start to growl ferociously, already making their way towards them with clumsy steps. _Shit! Shit! Shit!_

Her brain screams at her as they turn and start running in the other direction, wasting no time. Her backpack is bumping uncomfortably up and down her back, when she feels a hand pulling on her right arm as the woman places it on her shoulder, to help Toni run as she did before. Her muscles are exhausted and she doesn’t know where else to get the energy to keep going. _Maybe from the fear of death_. Yeah, she’ll go with it.

Finally they leave the parking area running towards the gates at the back of the school. She looks back and sees the walkers from before, plus at least three or four others they manage to catch the attention as well, following them. Sweat is dripping from her face, the woman by her side is whimpering, clearly losing her strength at every step, if her shortness of breath is anything to go by. They look back again and see a figure running in front of the group, the taller woman next to her raises her gun and, without aiming, shoots at the walker. Toni can see it lands on the shoulder; it won’t kill it, but at least makes it fall to the ground, which also makes some others slow down a bit, even if it’s just to go around the one down.

When they reach the fence, they don't waste time and unwind the chain the fastest they can, luckily there isn’t a padlock locking it, and open the gate. As the redhead pushes the fence to close it, Toni takes the chains with shaking hands and quickly wraps around the fence again as many times as possible, removing her hands seconds before a walker almost snatches her fingers.

They take fearful steps back while the fence resists the walkers pushing it. She knows this won’t hold them forever, especially without a lock but it does the trick. Toni and the other girl walk fast away from them until they’re a safe distance from the place. Two walkers pass them separately, walking towards the gates because of the noise of others, but they easily dodge them thanks to the countless abandoned cars in the middle of the street. Toni stops walking only when she leans against a car to catch her breath. The redhead also stops and bends forward, resting her hands on her knees, probably doing the same.

She removes her jacket because of the burning sensation on her body the race had caused. The woman is still hunched forward, but less breathless it seems. Toni looks through the cars, just to make sure the walkers are still behind the fence and far away from them.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Toni says, trying to take the heaviness of the situation, but mentally smacking her head at the stupid comment. She tries again, starting with something more reasonable, “Thank you, I wouldn’t be able to…” she starts talking as she turns around, but then notices the gun in the girl's hand.

“I'm really sorry, but I can't risk it.” The last thing Toni sees is the handle of the gun coming towards the side of her head and the pain of the blow making her pass out.

* * *

The grunts in the background are what wake her up slowly. But also the pain in her ankle, now mixed with the pain in her head. Still with her eyes closed, she places her hand on her forehead and winces. Toni opens her eyes and sees the blood on her fingertips. Everything around her is blurry as she comes out of her sleep clouded mind, and she straightens her back on the seat. There’s a steering wheel in front of her and she frowns, still dizzy, trying to make sense of where she is.

A loud slap on the glass beside her makes her jump in shock and abruptly turns to face it. A walker that has half its face torn and an eyeball hanging by the optic nerve is on the other side tapping the glass. Dried blood is spread over its chin and rotten teeth.

Her heart is pounding. She looks around and realizes she’s trapped inside a car. The night surrounds everything around the street, but the moonlight creates enough light so she can see the two walkers around the car, one beside her and another in front of the hood, trying somehow to reach inside. The arms slam against the hood and the window of the car and scratching it with thin nails, creating an agonizing noise.

Gradually, as she remembers what happened that afternoon, anger boils on Toni’s blood. She looks around the car, on the passenger seat is only a bottle of water and her gun. The backpack is gone. She squeezes the steering wheel between her hands and cries out cursing that woman. She has left her here with nearly nothing. In the middle of her rage, Toni swears if she finds her again, that girl will pay for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go! What did you think? Let me know.


	2. the ways of the universe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, what I love about AUs is that you can take the universe and change whatever you want about it, like for example a characters age. So yes, Jason is alive in this story, but for reasons of: because I want it, he and Cheryl are NOT twins. Jason is 8 years old here.  
> Hope you like it! :)

_"In the face of pain there are no heroes."  
-George Orwell_

_Three weeks later_

Cheryl doesn’t know how long she’s been looking out of the window, but the sun is shinning behind dense clouds and the city’s buildings. She doesn't know the day for sure, but she does know it must be close to December because of the bitter cold.

She tries to snuggle further into the coat she’s wearing. It’s a bit small for her, she found it among the few other pieces that were left inside the wardrobe of this apartment. Through the window, she can see the morning light illuminating the street ahead. On a wall right in front of where she is it’s written in capital letters: _"WHERE IS THE GOVERNMENT NOW?"_ The message was probably left after everything fell apart, when not even the army could control it. Even with the US President declaring Martial Law, chaos had been spread. Militarized laws did nothing to solve the “crisis” – how they were calling it – the whole world entered.

Moving her eyes away from the wall, she looks at the establishment ahead. It’s her turn to keep watch and only the soft breaths of the people sleeping behind her make her know she’s not alone. She looks back and sees Jason asleep hugging him teddy bear. The 8 years old boy has an extra blanket wrapped around him – hers – but she still fears he’s not warn enough, especially since he has just recovered from a pneumonia a few days ago. His features and red hair makes anyone looking think that he’s a younger and male version of Cheryl. She slightly smiles looking at him. All she’s doing right now, since everything changed – even before it did – is protect him from anything or anyone.

Beside him was Betty, their cousin and Kevin, still a little pale from the serious infection he had from a cut on his left arm, although he’s much better than he was a few weeks ago. They are all sleeping in the left corner of the little apartment they decided to stay for the night.

“Your shift ended half an hour ago.” A voice coming from Cheryl's back startles her for a second. She turns around and sees Archie smiling friendly, offering her his blanket.

“I'm fine, thank you.” she replies, with a weak smile.

They all came from the same town, but Cheryl, Jason, Betty and Archie stayed there even after the pandemic reached its peak. Though, right before all ways of commutation were cut off Betty got a call from her sister, Polly. She’s a doctor working at the CDC, Center for Disease Control, in Atlanta, Georgia. Polly said if they ever wanted they should go there, it’s safe. And the doctors were working on a cure. This was months ago, they chose to stay in town for as long as possible before Betty finally snapped after her mom died and decided she was going to find her sister. Cheryl didn’t really have any reason to stay in town, except for Jason, but she figured trying to find somewhere safer for him was the best she could do. Archie was also alone, so both of them decided to join Betty on her trip. So that became their final destination since they left. Some days after leaving the town they ran into Kevin on a gas station by himself and he was another addition to their little group.

They were supposed to get there a lot earlier, but with two people sick and one of them a kid, it makes traveling a little more challenging especially long distances, so they’re a few weeks late.

“If there was something wrong with the plan, you would’ve found it.” Archie murmurs, studying the supermarket through the window with her as he runs his hand over his red hair.

“We need a lot to continue.” she says, trying to see the back of the establishment. It probably leads to a parking area.

They chose that apartment on purpose to keep an eye on the supermarket for the night. They got here yesterday, but the sun was already setting so they decided it would be better if they watch the place a little bit before making any moves. In the morning is safer, and she’s been watching through the window most of the night. No zombies on the streets, but she doesn’t know what’s inside the place yet. And no sign of humans and that’s a good thing. Archie always insists that humans were as dangerous as the dead now.

“We'll take Betty. And Kevin can stay here with Jason.” He suggests, sitting down next to her. Cheryl nods, agreeing.

“We should go in through the back and get out through the front door.” she says, pointing at the other side.

”Okay.”

They are silent for a few seconds. But, over her shoulder, she realizes that Archie is restless, he keeps shifting around, tapping his fingers on his leg.

“What is it?” Cheryl questioned quietly.

He clears his throat a few times, “I just don’t want what happened last time we couldn’t find anything on a search to happen again.”

“Oh… that.”

“I was worried when you left like that and came back in the middle of the night,” he says looking a little anguished, “we all were.” He adds eyeing the people behind them.

Cheryl looks away from him and doesn’t reply.

It happened three weeks ago, they went on a supplies search looking for food and medicine, Jason and Kevin were sick and getting worse by each day. But the place they broke into was totally empty. Cheryl was desperate and she made a quick decision, sneaking without the rest of them realizing and going to try to find something alone. The only thing in her mind was that an untreated pneumonia could kill. So she, without a care and irresponsibly, searched a lot of places that day until she came across a school and well...

Thoughts of that woman still consume her mind. Her long brown hair streaked with pink highlights though a little faded, smooth looking dark skin. But especially the look on her face right before Cheryl decided to leave her behind and knocked her out with her gun. She wonders why she risked coming back to help the woman, but it was what’s right, not being a complete monster and letting a person be torn to pieces. But the guilt still eats her alive for leaving the pink-haired girl inside that car. Had she managed to get out of there? Cheryl definitely wasn’t there to find out, so she doesn't know.

“It was really stupid what you did and to come back in the middle of the night.” Archie continues when Cheryl doesn’t answer.

“Okay okay, I get it. Thank you…” she looks back at him and trying to change the subject she bumps on his shoulder with her own and whispers back teasingly, “Must be spending too much time with you.”

Archie smiles a little, “I think you were actually able to absorb some of the stupidity here.” He lifts his index finger and taps two times on his temple, “I’m wiser now.”

“Sure you are.” She nods her head, playing along with him.

“Yeah, I’m worrying too much about all of you, it must be taking twenty years of my life every month.” He lets out a small laugh, but it dies too soon. He looks at Cheryl with pleading eyes, “I was serious before, you shouldn’t have done that. And never alone.”

“You already gave me that speech before,” she says a little exasperatedly. She knows it comes from a good place of his heart, but if she has to listen to it one more time. So she tries again, “But at least I found the medicine we needed.”

And although she feels horrible for doing that to that woman – Toni, if that was her name, as someone was calling her through her walkie talkie –, she can’t say she regrets it, looking back at Jason.

Archie sighs and whispers, “Just don't do it again, okay?”

“I won’t.”

Archie always acts like the caretaker of their group; she knows he thinks it’s his responsibility. And even though he and Cheryl weren’t really close in high school, they created a bond on their time together during this apocalypse and she feels like sometimes Archie treats her like the little sister he never had. It can be pretty annoying at times, but she appreciates it - especially because he treats Jason the same way -, even though she would never admit it out loud, but she thinks Archie knows this anyway.

“Thank you, I won’t bother you anymore.” Archie says absently, starting to look for something in the pile of blankets and tools next to him. He pauses for a second though and adds, “Today.”

“Good,” she says rolling her eyes, but couldn’t help the small smile on her face.

“Here,” Archie says, finding what he was looking for. He tries to pass her a piece of bread wrapped in cloth. “I saw you giving your part of the food to Jason.”

“It’s yours,” Cheryl says firmly. “And we don’t have much.”

“I already ate before, you didn’t. Eat something, you’ll need it.” He says pointing out of the window. Still he sees her mulish expression. “Come on, we’ll get more.”

Sighing she reaches out to take the bread he’s offering. “Yeah, let’s hope so.”

They stay silent for long minutes while she eats, until Archie looks down at the watch on his wrist.

“I think we should wake them.” He suggests, starting to get up. “If we get the supplies we need before the end of the afternoon we can still go back to the gas station a few blocks south and fill the tank.”

"Yes, that’s fine." she says, getting rid of the crumbs on her hands.

It’s only close to noon when Cheryl, Archie and Betty are ready. They have a breakfast that consists of a few cereal bars and water. On their backs are empty backpacks to fill with smaller things, and they’ll bring the bigger things in shopping carts to the car. Archie hands her a gun before going to the other side of the room to check his things, and even though she has her bow and arrows, a much better and silent choice of weapon than a gun, she still carries one just in case.

She’s focusing on the gun in her hands, loading it when a movement on her left side catches her attention.

“Are you going to be okay, Cher?” her brother asks her, his voice sounding a little worried. At hearing it, her heart bursts painfully in her chest. She bends down and strokes his hair.

“Yeah, I will.” she answers, smiling. “I'm just going across the street and get some food.”

“Cousin Betty will protect you? And Archie too?” Jason asks with his head down.

“Yes, JayJay. You don’t need to worry.” Cheryl says softly. Jason’s smart, he knows more or less what’s going on, but her heart breaks every time she hears the innocence still coating his voice. _He is too young for this world_ , she thinks to herself. “Everything will be fine and Kevin will stay here to look after you.”

“Okay.” Jason murmurs, hugging Cheryl tightly. She closes her eyes, feeling the small warmth of his arms around her shoulders. 

“Let's just get the food and go to the CDC, okay?” she says, getting up again. He nods and runs over to where some toys are lying on the floor.

“I'll take care of him, don’t worry.” Kevin says, sitting down next to him.

Even with his bandaged arm and managing to make only a few movements with it, Kevin still kept a tender expression on him face. He’s a strong man, and he’s beating the shit out of this infection, especially now with the help of the antibiotics. He’ll be good as new in no time.

“I know you will,” she answers, smiling at him.

She looks around the room; Archie’s still checking his gun and knife one last time when Betty walked over to her, holding a smile.

“Hey,” the blonde girl greets her, looking behind her back at Archie who is on the far end of the room. “So, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop before but…” She trails off.

Cheryl sits down to tie the laces of her boots, but not before giving Betty a hard look. “What did I do now?”

“You didn’t tell him what really happened at that school, did you?”

Cheryl looks to see if Archie is far enough and whispers back at Betty, “No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?” she asks. Moving her eyes back to Betty, Cheryl sees the other girl is looking like she’s fighting a laugh.

She sighs exasperatedly, and grabs her quiver on the floor to check how many arrows she has. She has already done this not 10 minutes ago, but she needs another thing to concentrate that isn’t this conversation.

“There was no point.”

“Oh? So it wasn’t because you think you,” she lifts both of her hands, making quotation marks with her fingers, “‘fucked over this really hot girl I found at a school, though she kind of fucked me over first with her gunshots’ I think those were your exact desperately-spoken words.” Betty says, and now she does let out a laugh.

Cheryl rolls her eyes so hard she’s afraid she’ll damage something, “And now I’m regretting telling you,” she grumbles. “I said that once, it was the guilt talking.”

“I’m sure it was your guilt that made you notice the ‘crushing beauty’ of a girl you stole from.”

“Okay, now you’re just making things up.” Cheryl says quietly, suddenly lost in thought of that day again and what she did by the end of it. Betty seems to notice the change on her demeanor.

“Hey, I’m not judging you.”

Cheryl sighs and asks what she’s being thinking about for three weeks now, “I don’t really regret it, does that make me a terrible person?”

She’s looking at the floor so she doesn’t see what Betty reaction is at first. Then the blonde crouches in front of her, entering her line of sight.

“No, of course not.” Betty says softly, putting a hand on Cheryl’s shoulder and squeezing lightly, “You just did what you had to, you were desperate. We don’t know what would’ve happened with Jason or Kevin if you hadn’t brought those antibiotics in time. I wouldn’t regret it either.”

She gives Betty a stiff smile, and tries to get rid of the thoughts of the girl with pink hair.

“Ready?” Archie asks, approaching them seconds later. 

“Yes.” Betty answers. Cheryl just nods her head and gets up.

They walk out the door of their room, Archie going first, he insists on looking around a bit just in case. They had cleaned all the apartments on the first three floors when they got there, but found almost anything, only two zombies walking around there. Beside them, all the apartments are empty; everyone had probably fled when the pandemic started. But they managed to find some important things like blankets, clothes and some hygiene products.

They go downstairs and Archie pushes the building door open and looks around the cold street. She can see over his shoulder only a few random zombies wander nearly three blocks away. They walk quickly, crossing the street and with a lineman’s pliers, Archie breaks the padlock and opens the fence around the supermarket.

There’s a barricade line, probably left there by the army at the beginning of this Apocalypse. Some armed tents and the remains of bullet cartridges are scattered on the floor, a gunfire had taken place here before everyone was killed, one way or another.

“Let's look around first,” Archie suggests, with his gun raised at eye level pointing ahead, “See if it's safe before we go in.”

Cheryl and Betty only nod and she walks to the left side of the establishment, while Betty goes to the right. A few scattered dumpsters, cars abandoned on the tiny parking lot, but no sign of zombies or humans. Betty makes a sign with the hand that isn’t holding her axe that she loves so much, showing that the other side is also clear.

The three of them go around the market to the back door and Cheryl willing herself to ignore the splashes of blood on the walls, tries to open the door, but of course is locked. She takes a step back and motions her hand for Archie.

“I know this is your dream, go on!”

“Shut up,” He smiles and shakes his head, looking back at the streets, “It’ll draw a lot of attention.”

“It’s better if the ones inside come at us first than if we get caught by surprise later.” Betty says behind them.

“And if those zombies on the street come here, by that time we’d already be getting out. That’s why I said we have to get in through the back, the front door will be clear.” Cheryl adds after Betty, pointing her thumb over her shoulders at the few creatures wandering on the other street.

“I know I know, I was just hoping we could avoid that.” Archie seems to deliberate for a while, but this is the only way in if not the front door and they have to get out through there. Seem to have decided, he steps forward and roughly kicks the door, which at first doesn’t break. He tries again and the wood shatters causing the handle on the door to give way with a snap, creating a noise that easily echoes through the silence of the street. Cheryl swallows hard, this has to work.

The door led to a corridor. Narrow, dark and cold. _Just how I like it_ , she thinks sarcastically.

Before going through the door she gets her bow ready loading it with an arrow. They walk for a few seconds and see the corridor ends at a warehouse. They keep walking through the darkness and she notices some empty boxes are scattered on the floor, but others are still on the pallet racking. She doesn’t see or hear any zombie close by, so she nods at Archie and Betty and they hit the handle of their weapons on a piece of metal making a high-pitched noise. If there’re any of them here, it won't take long for it to come.

They wait for a few moments and a grunt surfaces in the distance. Three zombies with what look like security clothes quickly appear. One for each of them, she thinks with wry amusement. She focus on the one in the middle, on its neck there’re a mark of a deep bite that had torn its veins. Cheryl raises her bow and arrow, and is the first to make a move, firing off the shot against that one; she watches the arrow wedging in the middle of its skull.

Betty takes the one on her right, with one blow she slams the axe down into the zombie's head; meanwhile Archie takes the one on her left, unsheathing his hunting knife and quickly yanking it into the creature’s brain. Cheryl makes her way for the one she killed to claim her arrow back. Shifting her bow across her back, she begins to wipe the arrow with a rag, and once it’s sufficiently cleaned, she places it in her quiver again.

Taking two shopping carts, they start to fill them up with anything usable they can find, from this warehouse to the front of the supermarket. Some shelves are really empty, but others are still full. They get water and lots of canned food, also finding some medicines in the small drugstore there and some gardening tools that can be used as weapons.

They’re getting ready to leave, already thinking at any minute now zombies would be getting in from the back door they left open, when a roaring engine echoes outside at the entry. Archie and Cheryl looked at each other, worried.

“Shit!” he growls, pulling her by the hand to where Betty is behind a counter.

“Was that a car?” Betty asks when they pull her down to a crouching position, hiding from the front door. Cheryl just nods.

She leans against the counter, listing to the sound of conversation in front of the supermarket; she’s able to distinguish at least three voices - or more.

“What do we do?” Betty whispers desperately.

“There's a lot of food here,” Cheryl says, trying to calm her down. “Maybe we can just talk to them and make a deal so no one gets hurt.”

“Let's see what we're getting into first.” Archie replies, looking at the door.

They force the glass door, just to check if it was closed or not. She hears the sound of metal and gets up a little bit to see a tall, strong man with black hair trying to open the door with a crowbar, his ripped sleeveless denim vest making him look rather intimidating.

Another shorter man joins him and with a little work they finally manage to open it. The taller one comes in first, he is holding a shotgun. _Shit._ She watches the other one come in next and she sees he’s holding a rifle. _Double shit._

Cheryl sits down again with her heart racing and closes her eyes. What if it was a group of only men? If there’re more of them, she doesn’t know if they’ll be able to protect themselves. They can escape through the back door, take a risk with the zombies. But these men will see them, it’s too far and either way she doesn't want to leave their things behind.

She hears more footsteps and voices echo through the establishment. This time it’s a female voice that speaks next.

“Sweets, what are we going to do with the door?” she asks.

“Leave it open,” one of the men replies.

Cheryl looks over the counter again and sees that the tall man answered it. Behind him is a girl with dark hair around the shoulders and olive skin, she’s the one who spoke before.

“Okay, let's do this.” Another female voice echoes, but she can't find who said it. Cheryl suddenly stops breathing, her body shivers when she recognizes that voice. _No, it can't be... It can't be her!_ It must be a coincidence, people have similar voices, right? “Sweets and Fangs go to the left and Veronica and I will go to the right.” She continues talking, totally unaware to the storm her voice is causing on Cheryl’s brain. “Any noise can alarm them and we don't know how many there’re here.”

“If there was a walker here, it would have already showed up.” the other woman says.

“I know, but be careful anyway.” the voice Cheryl’s begging it doesn’t belong to who she’s thinking, replies.

The footsteps start again making the three of them hiding behind the counter shiver.

“We should say we're here, right?” Betty whispers, “What if they have guns? And if they...”

“Shhh,” Archie shushes her, probably trying to think of what to do. She then hears Archie and Betty whispering to each other, but Cheryl tunes them out, she has to know if it’s her or not. Because if it is, they probably wouldn’t be getting out of here alive even if they try to make a deal. She craws to what someday was a fruit stand and hides behind it, trying to get a look at the only person there she couldn’t see before. She looks back at her friends, and they are gesturing widely at her, she just shakes her head at them and moves a little more to the left looking around, but she can’t see her anywhere. The seconds pass and the steps seem to be getting closer and closer.

“Guys!” the female voice she doesn’t know echoes.

“What is it, V?” the taller man asks. She shudders at sensing how close he’s to them.

“There’re two carts full of groceries there,” she replies. “Humans were in here!”

She looks back at her friends and watches Betty start to get up slowly, but soon Archie grabs her arm, pulling her down. Cheryl frowns, watching them silently fighting over something. Betty yanks her arm free and before he can say anything else she start to crawl off the counter, in the opposite direction to where Cheryl is.

Archie seems to be growling under his breath, he looks at Cheryl, and she tries to ask what’s going on with her eyes, Archie just shake his head and takes out the gun from his holster on his belt. _Oh fuck._

She drags her eyes back to Betty, she seems to be going to where their shopping carts are. The shorter man, whom logically is named Fangs, is on his back looking at the taller one, – Sweets? Those are really weird names - next to Veronica, it looks like they’re arguing quietly and they’re really close to where Betty is heading.

Cheryl looks at the shelf right beside the shopping carts and can see what Betty is probably after. On the top it’s her gun. _Oh no._

Slowly, Cheryl reaches for one arrow behind her back, but the sound of the voice that has being hunting her echoing behind her back makes her stop with her fingers around the nock of the arrow. 

“Don't even think about it.” she orders. Cheryl closes her eyes, her heart clenching. "Put your hands down and turn around slowly.”

Angrily, she does what she’s asked. Cheryl turns around slowly, sighing in exasperation as she comes face to face with the girl that plagues her for weeks now. The woman narrows her eyes, obviously recognizing her immediately.

She’s wearing black skinning jeans, a blue tank top and a black jacket on top, a beanie covering her head. As Cheryl looks at her face again she notices the girl has a tiny scar on her left eyebrow that wasn’t there before, she shudders realizing she was the cause of that. Her eyes show an immense satisfaction, almost a sense of revenge, when she looks at Cheryl.

“Would you look at that,” she murmurs, a smirk forms on her lips while still aiming her gun at Cheryl’s head. “The ways of the universe…”

She then lets out a sarcastic little laugh and Cheryl rolls her eyes, mentally cursing whatever almighty that’s fucking with her like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well first, thank you so much for reading, leaving kudos and those who commented. I really really appreciate it.  
> So if you watched TWD you noticed that I'll be following part of the plot of season 1 (the CDC thing), but don't worry. Nothing in the show will spoiler this story. Or vise-versa, nothing in this fic will spoiler the show, if you're thinking of watching it one day.  
> Also I forgot to mention this before, but english is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes you'll most likely find. I'm trying, hopefully it's not too bad!  
> Let me know what you thought of the chapter. See you soon! xx


	3. we're not the enemies

_"Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.”  
-Jodi Picoult_

_The night before_

It’s quiet, too quiet even, and Toni can’t sleep. Sometimes the silence scares her, and she would give anything just to hear the traffic outside again, to hear someone else’s life through paper thin walls. Their conflicts, their conversations, their laughs, their annoying music…

Anything that could remind her of something _normal_.

Toni’s counting the numerous cracks on the ceiling, her arms under the pillow and a thick blanket to keep her from the cold. As much as she used to love the end of the year, this one, in particular, is colder than usual. Florida was never a cold state. But, maybe it’s Nature punishing everyone in every way possible: die from being bitten by a walker or die from the cold.

How she wished this house had a space heater. They found only a few canned foods and rest of cereals in it, which is great anyway since some of them hadn't eaten in more than a day.

“Tiny? Are you awake?” Sweet Pea’s low voice caught her attention, she turns over in the bed and sees him leaning against the open door that led to a small balcony.

“Yeah,” she answers, he motions with his right hand, making a sign for her go outside. She gets up carefully, cursing the loud creaking of the old bed, she looks around to see if she woke anyone up. Fangs is completely still on the top bed of the bunker, save for his chest rising and falling at every breath. Jughead’s eyes are closed, he’s sitting on the bottom bed leaning against the wall but Toni doesn’t think he managed to fall asleep at all this night, worried about his sister, she who seems to be actually sleeping using his right leg as a pillow.

Seeing that everything remains the same, she crosses the room to the balcony. She takes her jacket from the chair beside the bed and puts it on before stepping outside. Veronica is there too, her hands resting on the handrail. She’s looking up at the sky, which is completely dark now. Veronica looks at her when Toni stops beside her doing the same.

She gives Toni a small smile, “Can’t sleep?”

Toni just shakes her head softly, Sweet Pea comes to lean against the handrail as well, Toni standing in the middle of them two.

“Do you see that building over there?” Sweet Pea asks, pointing at the right side of the street, it’s mostly all darkness, everything almost invisible because of the night, but she can see a shadow of a 1 floor building where he’s indicating not that far away from where they are. “That’s a supermarket over there.”

“Okay...?” she asks, confused. “It must have been looted already, just like the others we passed.”

"No." he denies, shaking his head. “When we passed by it yesterday, I saw the fences and some Humvees outside!” he says, pointing to some shadows that could be army vehicles. “That one was protected by the army, maybe an attempt to be a safe place so they could look for the wounded or something.”

“Do you think there's still food there?”

“It’s worth a try. We need to stock up before traveling to the CDC. We can go there tomorrow.”

“We need medicine, the one in JB’s inhaler ran out already.” Veronica says reminding Toni she’s here as well.

"I know," Toni sighs heavily.

“There’s probably a drugstore inside.” Veronica adds.

It’s worse when she realizes that it’s her responsibility. If she hadn't being stolen from, Jelly Bean would have the drug for her asthma inhaler. They found one shortly after that... incident. But still, it was only one, probably not even full, and it just ended.

Feeling overwhelmed, she runs her hand through her hair in a clear act of exhaustion. She still harbors a lot of rage over what happened.

She still remembers like it was yesterday, when Veronica and Sweet Pea finally found her the next day, thanks to the walkie talkie. The number of walkers around the car had increased a little throughout the night, and it wasn’t safe to leave without a weapon. She didn’t want to use the gun obviously, not like it would do any good especially only one bullet.

Veronica and Sweet Pea quickly slaughtered the walkers and, as happy as she was to be found, it didn’t change the fact she was enraged that they had to come to rescue her.

“It’s not your fault!” Sweet Pea whispers, with his hand on her shoulder for comfort and she’s brought back from her memory.

”Yes it is.” she growls, closing her fists. “I shouldn't have trusted her.”

“I still can't believe she locked you in a car.” Veronica says, somehow managing to sound both amused and outraged.

“Okay, I don't want to talk about it!” Toni grumbles while rubbing her hands in an attempt to lessen the cold on her fingers.

“Oh... someone’s pride is hurt.” Veronica teases. “She got her ass kicked by her hero and almost died because of that,” she pokes Toni’s ribs with her fingers punctuating each word. Toni slaps her hand away.

“Shut up or I’ll make you swallow these fingers.” she scolds, glaring at her. Veronica retracts her hand cradling it against her chest, a look of fake outrage on her face.

“Well, she did save your life, Toni.” Sweet Pea replies, making her turn to glare at him too. “Look, I’m not saying I’m not mad as hell at her for leaving you stuck in that car, but she saved your life!” He continues, softening his face, “Have you ever thought if she left you behind? With your ankle injured like that? She didn’t have anything to do with it from what you told us. If it was anyone else…” He takes a deep breath, as if he doesn’t want to say what comes next, “If it were me, I probably wouldn't go back for a stranger.”

“What?” she stammers the word out, surprised.

“I won’t pretend and say that I would go back.” Sweet Pea answers, looking up at the sky. “In the world today? Well... what matters now for anyone are the people we know and love, not strangers! What she did, not everyone would do.” He looks at her then, the exhaustion in his eyes making him look older then he really is, “I mean, would you?”

She remains silent, still trying to absorb his speech. _Would I have come back to save her if the situation was reversed?_

* * *

_Now_

Looking at the redhead in front of her, the person who has taken over her thoughts for the past three weeks, Toni would manage to come up with an answer to that question.

She, a man and another woman are standing in front of Toni’s group. Toni’s no longer holding a gun at her head, but she and the others behind her are still unsure of the three, still on alert.

“Hello, my name is Betty!” says the blonde girl, trying to be polite. “This is Cheryl and Archie. Thank you for not killing us at first.”

Toni raises an eyebrow, and turns her eyes to study the woman wrapped in a thick coat. _Cheryl? Is that her name?_ She avoids returning the look, as if trying to show she doesn't recognize her. Toni crosses her arms in front of her body defensively.

“We’re not really the kind to shoot first ask questions later, especially when outnumbered.” Veronica says glaring at Betty, probably since she was the one trying to reach for the gun first. The redhead man, Archie, rolls his eyes at that statement. Toni looks between him and Cheryl wondering if they’re maybe related, but aside from the color of their hair they don’t really look alike.

“Oh… I wasn’t going to… umm…” Betty gasps, but doesn’t finish her sentence.

“Okay calm down, I think we can come up with an agreement.” Cheryl offers them seriously.

Toni clenches her fist in anger. “Oh, now you want an agreement?” she asks with a snort and Cheryl finally looks at her again, her eyes a mixture of guilt and worry for her group maybe. But Toni couldn’t care less about that. “After leaving me stuck in a fucking car, you want to make a deal?!” her voice comes out more exasperated.

Cheryl averts her eyes then, and Toni watches the different reactions she gets from her friends. Betty looks confused for one second, but a look of understanding takes over her face as she looks between her and Cheryl. Archie just looks confused as hell, he narrows his eyes at Cheryl murmuring “What?” under his breath, so quiet that if Toni wasn’t paying attention, she wouldn’t have catch that. She’s still feeling her blood boiling though, so she doesn’t even give her time to explain and continues.

“It’s law of the jungle now right?! Survival of the fittest?! We should just leave them here for the walkers.” She open her arms theatrically as she turns slightly to look at her group, before quickly looking back at the strangers in front of her, “Veronica’s right, you’re outnumbered, you’ll gonna lose this fight.” Toni says.

Archie takes a small step forward at that, looking a bit pissed off.

“Well if you want to play like that. Even if you win by number, we would at least take some of you with us in the process. Are you willing to take that risk?” Archie hisses angrily.

Before Toni could do or say anything Sweet Pea steps forward almost in front of her, already placing his hand on the shotgun on his side, held by a strap across his torso, staring down at Archie, who automatically put his hand where his gun is on his belt. They stare firmly at each other, not even blinking.

Everyone else suddenly looks decidedly on edge. Betty and Cheryl open their eyes wide, apprehensive, and take a few steps closer to the scene. Toni’s also on high alert ready to grab her gun if needed and Veronica already clenching a knife beside her body.

“Hey! Hey!” Fangs speaks up, trying to take over the situation, putting his hand on Sweet Pea’s shoulder. “We’re not gonna solve anything that way.” When they still don’t move, just seem even more ready to go into attack mode.

“Archie,” Betty pleads, looking at the man beside her. “Archie! Come on, stop!”

Almost as he was coming out of a haze, Archie slowly removes his hand from the gun and holding his hands up to indicate surrender, backing away as well. Only when Sweet Pea lets go of his gun too, Archie crosses his arms over his chest, giving Betty a tight smile.

Sweet Pea runs his hind through his hair and sighs deeply, “You’re right,” he says, “Walkers are the enemies here.” Toni rolls her eyes impatiently. Fangs apparently sensed she’s going to disagree, he glares at her and steps in front of the group.

“Exactly, there’s no need for violence. We’re all here with the same purpose, to survive. We should only kill walkers!” Fangs, kind as always, puts down his rifle and tries to settle the situation smoothly, “We can all get supplies for ourselves without any trouble.”

“He's right. We’re not the enemies,” Cheryl says warily, tension not quite leaving her shoulders yet. “And we should do it fast before the zombies get in here.”

“You call them zombies?” Veronica replies, with a low chuckle. “Oh, please.”

“Yes, any problem?” Betty asks, her face a mask of impatience as she stares angrily at the brunette.

“There is no need for anyone to fight with anyone here, remember?!” says Fangs, casting a hard look at Veronica, “I think we should introduce ourselves. I'm Fangs, it’s just a nickname don’t worry,” He says with a friendly smile.

And okay, now Toni’s the one that can’t take this anymore. Are they really serious about this?

“Oh come on,” she growls, not believing that they’re making any kind of alliance right now. “Are we really doing this with three people we don't even know?” 

“Toni...” Sweet Pea tries to speak, but she’s already too irritated especially because of the look of annoyance Cheryl throws her way.

“What? You want to share everything with them, Sweet Pea,” Toni practically whines.

“There is enough for everyone!” Sweet Pea argues, raising his voice. W _here is the guy that said he would leave a stranger behind now?_ She mentally mumbles.

“What are we gonna do now? We’re going to become a big group?” Toni says, facing him. She knows he’s starting to lose his patience but she can’t bring herself to care. “Should we hold hands and sing Hakuna Matata together?”

“TONI, STOP IT!” Sweet Pea shouts without thinking.

He quickly closes his eyes and fists, a grimace on his face regretting screaming in the silence of the place. They all stay still for a while, praying it’ll stay that way. Unfortunately, seconds later the guttural grunts echo through the supermarket and Toni feels her heart sinks. 

“Damn it!” Cheryl curses, already reaching for her weapon, “Are you happy now?!”

Soon, four walkers appear pushing themselves to come through the double doors that separate them from the warehouse of this place and more were coming right after. But there’re some of them much closer, that they hadn’t even noticed coming in before now. The first one is shirtless and its ribcage exposed, showing rotten bones and organs. The pack is taking their characteristic steps towards the shouting and their smell.

"Did you guys leave the damn door open?" Veronica hisses, before running in the opposite direction of the walkers.

“We were supposed to be out of here already if it wasn’t for you.” Cheryl roars her anger, firing the arrow she had just loaded into her bow at the closest walker to her.

“And you were the ones who got their attention,” Archie says back, eyes wide. “Not us!”

Toni raises her gun and fires, hitting the head of the shirtless walker. Cheryl and Betty are already running and at first Toni thinks that they’re heading towards the entering to escape from there. However, she watches over her shoulder Cheryl running to the walker she killed to get her arrow back and then run towards her shopping cart.

“Cheryl!” Betty scolds. “Leave it behind!”

But of course she ignores her friend's warning. She abandons the bow, throwing it across her back and takes the gun from her waistband shooting two other walkers. When she reaches the shopping cart, she grabs her backpack from it. Archie shouts something Toni doesn’t understand to Betty as he runs towards Cheryl. She watches all of this happening in a matter a seconds, stuck in place.

Coming out of it, she looks behind at her group, to see they’re already running towards the main exit of the supermarket and, in the first instance, she starts to follow them. Though, when her eyes land on the entrance glass, a shiver runs down her spine as she sees more walkers approaching from outside, obviously crawling here because of the gunshots.

They seem to come out of everywhere, crashing into each other, being guided by the sounds. To them.

A low growl behind her back takes her out of her thoughts. A walker with stained clothes and wrinkled skin already has its arms stretched out towards Toni. She stumbles backwards; trying to make room to shoot, but the walker suddenly throw itself at her direction grabbing her clothes, putting all of its weight on her.

Toni gasps when she feels herself fall backwards and watching the creature falling on top of her.

“Aah!” she cries out in pain when her back hits the hard floor, the smell of death entering her nostrils.

She struggles to get rid of the walker, one hand on its neck to keep its teeth away from her, with the other hand holding the gun she smashes the handle of the gun against the side of its head, throwing the walker to the floor next to her with all of her strength. Toni quickly gets up and raises her gun pointing at the walker’s forehead and fires. Black blood splashes on the floor above its head. The walker has its mouth opened so wide that she has the hellish sight of its throat; it’s like a bottomless pit. Toni turns away from it resting her hand on the shelf, urging back the nausea at its sight.

As she turns around to leave, she notices that two others are already approaching from behind her. Swallowing thickly, she lets go of the shelf and start running towards the door.

When she reaches the main doors of the supermarket, a sharp thunderous sound echoes through the place, she looks back to see where it came from, and a shelf on a hallway at the left side had just fallen down. Suddenly a loud woman’s scream rings in her ears.

She looks for the source of it still standing by the door. Toni then sees Cheryl and Archie surrounded against the shelf, behind the one that just fell, with at least six walkers cornering them. 

Looking out of the glass doors again, she sees that her group is shouting for her, next to their cars, even though she couldn’t hear it. They sign wildly to the herd of dozens of walkers on the streets approaching the huge courtyard.

Between Toni and the two redheads in the back, Betty’s fighting against a walker but quickly slams an axe on its head; she pushes it aside and starts running to help her friends. Toni tries to think clearly. _Do I help or not? Do I help or not? Do I help or not?_

When she notices Betty in front of three walkers at once and a whimper coming out of her lips, Toni makes her decision. She swallows her pride and runs towards them, shooting against the head of two creatures on her way.

“Betty!” Toni screams, trying to get her attention. “Here.”

She looks at Toni with a frown taking over her frightened face. But without hesitating, Toni throws her gun to the blonde who caught it in the air almost gracefully.

Toni removes her knife from the back of her jeans and runs faster when she sees a walker is about to grab Archie's arm from behind him. She pulls the creature by the hair and throws it against the shelf, shoving the knife into its skull. She yanks it out quickly, a watery sound echoing, while Archie kills the one he was focused on in front of him, he turns to look at her, still stunned, and nods his head in thanks before fighting another walker that appears out of nowhere at their right.

“Go to Cheryl!” Archie says breathless, “I’ll cover you.” Then he forces the hunting knife on the walker’s brain throwing the creature in the directing of the others.

Toni nods and starts running in the redhead woman’s direction, Archie by her side. A walker stretches its arms toward them, but Archie quickly grabs it by its shirt, staying behind to fight with it, giving her an almost clear way to go to Cheryl.

In the meanwhile, sounds of gunshots resurfaces. Betty’s probably shooting against the walkers but at the same time that she kills them, more are coming through the back of the supermarket.

A shot echoes on her side, causing Toni to turn around immediately on the defensive, to find a walker on the floor right behind her. She looks at where the shot came from and sees Sweet Pea, his gun raised. She smiles at him, glad to see that he came back too.

Toni looks ahead again just to see Cheryl struggling hard holding the head walker trying to bite her. The creature's teeth are inches from her face. Toni runs toward it and puts her hand on the around its neck to pull it out and she feels the sticky skin between her fingers. She stabs the knife into its skull through the top of its head, making the walker completely still seconds later.

“Let's get out of here!” she whispers breathlessly to Cheryl. 

Her eyes are now startled, quite different from the indifferent look she had minutes before. And in that moment, for mere seconds as Toni stares at the immensity of brown, she feels her heart miss a beat - and it isn't because of fear.

She nods, “Archie?”

“He’s right behind us.” Toni replies, _at least I hope so!_ She thinks but doesn’t say it out loud.

They started running out of the supermarket, dodging some walkers and the overthrow and abandoned shelves. Toni dares to look back and sees Archie running alongside Betty, shooting walkers that are too close to them, and she breathes a sigh of relief.

As Sweet Pea goes through the door first, Toni and Cheryl right behind, he runs and is back beside their cars in seconds.

They have two different cars, with Toni and Sweet Pea as the drivers. Sweet Pea's vehicle is already pulling of, but she’s able to see Fangs in the passenger seat and Jughead and Jelly Bean save in the back seat.

“Come on! Faster, for god's sake!” Veronica cries out, already inside Toni’s car.

Around them, a few feet away dispersed on the parking lot, walkers start to notice their presence and instead of going inside the place they all start to crawl, walk and run towards them. The repugnant smell of rot, decay and death making her stomach churn.

Cheryl’s getting into the passenger seat of the car as Toni walks around it, there’s a walker close to the door, coming from the other side of the car and she kicks it on the stomach making it fall backwards.

She gets into her seat and barely sits down, she already start the engine making a loud noise. She hears the back door opening and Betty and Archie getting into the car before closing forcefully again, Sweet Pea seeing that they’re already inside, quickly runs towards the fence, knocking it over with the impact.

“Oh god. Go! Go!” Cheryl shouts when she’s startled by a walker slapping the passenger glass.

Toni immediately speeds up, running over two walkers. She goes out through the same hole in the fence Sweet Pea made and follows him across the wide street, leaving the walkers behind in the parking lot following them into the street.

Toni takes a deep breath to try to calm her heartbeat and wipes the sweat off the side of her face with a shaking hand.

“Wait, where are you going?!” Betty asks behind her.

“Far away from here,” Toni replies trying to keep her voice from shaking. Holding the steering wheel with both hands steady, she’s constantly looking in the rearview mirror to make sure they’re safe.

“What?!” Cheryl exclaims as well, her eyes wide. “No! We need to go back.”

“You are crazy?!” Veronica replies at the same time Toni says, shaking her head negatively, “What? We’re not going back.”

She tries to stay close to the other car ahead of them that’s turning around a corner, where they know there won't be so many walkers. Or at least she hopes so, since they had made so much noise and probably alarmed the dead of the other streets.

“Turn around. Now!” Archie snarls from the back.

“My brother stayed behind! Did you listen to me?!” Cheryl continues to scream - and Toni is a little startled by her tone of voice so choked with anger. “I won’t leave him behind, and our friend is there with him as well.”

“Where are they?” she asks, looking in the rearview mirror. 

“They're in an apartment in front of the supermarket.”

“Again; are you crazy?!” Veronica says, running her hand through her hair desperately. “That whole street will be full of walkers for days.”

“I DON'T CARE!” Cheryl growls so loud that a vein is popping from her forehead.

She sees a movement on her right, but when she realizes what Cheryl’s going to do, it’s too late. In a desperate move, she quickly tries to take control of the steering wheel. And the car takes a sudden turn to the left.

“Let go of it. Fuck!” Toni shouts back, trying to regain control of the car.

After that, chaos is installed inside, everyone starts screaming at each other. Betty’s pissed at Veronica, telling her to shut up. Archie barks something at them that she doesn’t understand. Cheryl struggles to not let go of the steering wheel as Toni shouts for her to let go.

“Cheryl!” she screams again. “Cheryl, STOP!”

Cheryl, realizing she wouldn’t be able to control the car like that, she suddenly lets go of it, moving her hand to the handbrake. She pulls it making the car skids sharply. Luckily, because they were fighting over the steering wheel, Toni had slowed down the car but even so everyone is thrown forward by the force of the sudden stop and the lack of seat belts. Unluckily for her, while everyone hold themselves against the front seat and Cheryl against the dashboard, Toni feels herself being thrown forward and a sharp pain burning as she hits her forehead against the steering wheel.

When the car finally stops moving, she sits upright again. Toni winces as she brings her hand to her forehead, above her eyebrow, where she already had a healing wound caused by the same fucking person, and sees drops of blood on her fingertips.

“Fuck!” Toni growls, slamming her hands on the steering wheel, taking out her anger on it. “Are you crazy? What's wrong with you?! Jesus.”

Toni looks over at Cheryl, staring her down angrily. Cheryl stares back, not blinking. Her brown eyes narrow, she doesn’t look not even a little intimidated by Toni’s lash out.

“What do you have on your fucking head?” Veronica hisses. “This could’ve been a serious accident, you asshole!”

“We’re going back!” Cheryl and Archie growl at the same time.

“It doesn't matter if there’re millions of zombies on the way! WE. WILL. GO. BACK.” Cheryl basically orders, pausing at each word of the last sentence.

Toni lets out a tired sigh when she sees she won't win that fucking argument. She looks ahead to the other car and Sweet Pea had turned around, probably after hearing the sudden stop. He gets out of the car and opens his arms in their direction, confused.

Toni turns her eyes back at Cheryl, shooting her a death glare. But Cheryl doesn’t budge at that, a fierce look on her face. There’s something about this woman that always makes her body shudder.

Her insides burning with rage, she growls under her breath and gets out of the car, slamming the door shut harder than necessary. She walks towards Sweet Pea on the empty street, but in her mind Toni keeps cursing this woman’s acquired habit to get under her skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this through my Clexa breakdown last week lol, don't mind me, I'm fine. Completely, absolutely fine... Everything is just fine... without a doubt 🙃


	4. don't think the worst

_"Do you know what's worth fighting for? When it's not worth dying for?”_   
_21 guns by Green Day_

Cheryl swallows hard. She’s still in some kind of shock, but refuses to let it show on her face and pulls herself together as best as she can. Her heart is clenching in her chest because of the adrenaline as she watches Toni walk towards her friend on the street. She probably could’ve handled that better, but it’s done now. Cheryl wasn’t able to think straight knowing she was basically running away from her brother, leaving him there in a cold, full of zombies, place. Just the thought of Jason possibly being in danger makes her shudder.

Sweet Pea is now trying to check Toni's forehead and clean the drops of blood coming out of the wound. Toni, however, is clearly annoyed by that and constantly trying to get his hands off her face by muttering something like "I'm fine!"

Cheryl briefly looks at the back seat to see if anyone got hurt, but they look fine. Betty and Archie are looking in all directions through the car windows, worried if any zombies would come from the alleys between the houses. And Veronica seems fine enough, she keeps mumbling curses and about how they’re fucked. Cheryl just ignores it, looking ahead again.

She hugs her backpack harder against her body, a gesture of discomfort and fear, but with Toni gone she can at least let it show a small part of what she’s feeling at this moment.

Outside, Toni and Sweet Pea are visibly arguing. The pink haired girl spreads her arms, gesturing wildly, as if she doesn’t accept the direction the conversation is taking, but Sweet Pea just shakes his head at her. Suddenly he looks at their car, locking eyes with Cheryl and waves his hand, calling her. She takes a deep breath and gets out of the car, slamming the door shut. She hears another door opening and shutting behind her and she knows it’s Archie and Betty following her, she smiles inwardly, grateful for the backup. The afternoon chill hits her body, causing her to fold her arms in an attempt to warm up as they walk over to the two people between the cars.

“What apartment are they in?” Sweet asks calmly as soon as they approach. Toni still avoids looking at her, but Cheryl notices her twist her mouth in distaste. 

“On the street of the supermarket, right in front of it.” Cheryl answers promptly, "3rd floor."

“Damn it.” He curses, scratching the back of his neck. “The street must be blocked by now.”

“Like I said, it's suicide!” Toni grunts, turning to glare at Cheryl, “Why didn’t they go with you? Why split?”

“He’s 8. I don’t like putting him in danger when I can avoid it,” Cheryl snarls letting an edge of anger into her words, she closes her eyes trying to calm down, she can’t lose her temper again. _Think happy, hopeful thoughts. Don’t think about Jason in danger. Don’t think about Jason in danger,_ she chants in her mind repeatedly before turning her attention back to the conversation.

Toni and Sweet Pea share a look, “A kid… okay,” Sweet Pea sighs, he looks around the block before turning to Toni, “We can’t just leave a child behind, Toni.”

“I don't want to do that either, ok?!” Toni concedes, she takes off her beanie, putting it in her back pocket and runs her hand through her brown and pink locks. “But look,” she says pointing at some zombies that are walking their way. “They’re coming here even if slowly. We don’t have much time.”

They’re silent for a few tense seconds. Then Sweet Pea suddenly asks “Is there any other way out? Any emergency exit or something? Anywhere we can get in that isn’t the front door?”

“Are really considering going back?” Toni mumbles, making Cheryl want to snap at her again, but she manages to control herself and just ignores her comment.

“I, I don't know.” she stammers, starting to shake slightly, from what, fear or anger, she isn’t so sure, maybe both. So Archie steps beside her and answers the question.

“We've only been there since last night. We weren’t able to look for possible emergency exits, we just took a room on the front. Our plan was to take what we could in silence and leave calmly.” He shakes his head and adds, “maybe there’s a fire escape, but I’m not sure.”

“Great!” Toni scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Just great plan, I bet it was you who came up with it.” she says gesturing at Cheryl general direction.

Now, Cheryl was never one to back down, no one talks down to her, that’s definitely not gonna change now that they’re in fucking apocalypse. And she always gets what she wants, and right now she just wants to go find her brother and get the hell away from here. So fuck keeping calm.

“You know what,” Cheryl finally snaps, starting to take a few steps backwards, “we don’t need your help. I’m not gonna leave my brother and my friend behind. All of you can fucking go. We’ll find a way to get back by ourselves.” She turns around, her fists clenched and starts to walk back in the direction of grunts and snarls. Of danger and possible death. Of Jason.

She hears the sound of boots against the hard floor behind her, knowing Archie and Betty are following her, even if reluctantly.

She walks purposefully away, but before she even walks past the other car she hears someone heaving a loud sigh followed by a “Wait!”

She stops, allowing a tiny smile on her face before schooling her features back to seriousness and turns around. Toni and Sweet Pea are glaring at each other and another sigh leaves Toni’s mouth as she look at her again, “Okay, we can help you.” She presses the fingers of both of her hands to her temples massaging it and closes her eyes. “god, you always manage to give me headaches.”

Cheryl lets that one slide in favor of maintaining peace, they’re helping them, she knows she should be grateful for at least that. As she, Archie and Betty walk back to stand close to the two, she hears the sound of a car door opening and looks over Toni shoulder to see the guy from the supermarket, who introduced himself as Fangs and another man she haven’t seen before - he’s skinny, almost as pale as Cheryl and wearing a dirty beanie on his head,- walking up to them.

“What's the matter, guys?” Fangs asks, “Why did we stop?”

“They’re saying they have a kid behind.” Toni replies, hands on her hips.

“Inside the supermarket?!” Fangs raises his eyebrows, startled.

“No, but almost as worse.” She grunts, starting to walk back and forth on the cold street.

“In an apartment across the street.” Archie intervenes when Toni doesn’t elaborate.

“Is he alone?” the guy she hasn’t met yet speaks for the first time. From up close Cheryl sees dark bags under his eyes as if he hasn’t slept at all for days. Beside him, there’s a little girl she hadn’t notice before now, maybe 12 or 13 years old, looking at the strangers with almost a bored expression and Cheryl has to hold herself not to smile at it.

“There is also an adult there.” Cheryl says, looking back at him. “Kevin. But he’s hurt, someone had to look after Jason so he stayed behind.”

“Is it bad?” Fangs asks. “The injury, I mean.”

“We’ve already managed to treat it a little, but it still looks ugly.” she replies with a sad sigh.

“Guys,” Sweet Pea voices to get their attention.

Everyone quickly looks in the same direction he is staring at, watching two zombies approaching from the right side of the street. From the corner of her eyes she sees they drawing their weapons, the skinny guy putting his hands on the little girl’s shoulders moving her behind his back as she rolls her eyes. Cheryl reaches for her bow as well, but stops watching the scene unfold.

Sweet Pea and Toni are the closest to the creatures, they look at each other like they’re having a silent conversation, he nods to Toni and she nods back. They move towards the zombies, and Toni meeting the one on the left while the man goes to meet the one on the right. 

Toni quickly removes the knife from the waistband of her pants and shoves it into the head of the zombie who was once an old lady on her sixties, its skin pale, clothes dirty with dried blood. Sweet Pea walks over to the other one, it’s missing an arm and has a disgusting cut on its abdomen. He does the same and sticks his knife into the zombie's skull.

The two, in almost synchronized movements, remove their weapons from the creatures’ heads and shake them to get rid of blood from the blades.

“So we're going back, aren't we?” Fangs says, raising an eyebrow at Toni, like he knows she wouldn’t agree or like the idea.

Toni rolls her eyes. “We will, okay?! We just need a plan so it doesn't end up with us dying.”

“We don't have much time for that.” Sweet Pea says, watching some zombies walk their direction, they’re still too far to worry but not for long.

“Well, the problem is that they don't know if there’s an emergency exit.” Toni continues, pointing at Cheryl and throwing her a look that says _you messed up and you’re stupid for that_. Cheryl bites the inside of her cheek, already irritated by the woman's teasing. But, she also knows that she’s kinda right. They should’ve looked for emergency exits, you never know when you’ll need it.

Cheryl’s still cursing mentally when Betty says something for the first time since they got out of the car, “There’s an alley next to our building, but I don’t know if it has a fire escape. And also a fence in pieces blocking it, I think it still ward off some zombies from there.”

“But it’s just a guess,” Sweet Pea shakes his head, “We can just show up and hope th-”

“These buildings are old.” The little girl interrupts him, surprising everyone there, Cheryl raises her eyebrows at her and she continues, “I’m pretty sure they all have fire escape stairs and it should probably end up in that alley and go through all floors.”

“How the fuck do you know that?” the other guy beside her asks, frowning.

“I know stuff.” It’s her only response. As everyone just keeps staring at her, she rolls her eyes. “Trust me. Old buildings always have fire escape stairs.”

“Okay...” Sweet Pea murmurs, taking a deep breath. “Since we don’t have any other option, JB’s suspicious knowledge of buildings is gonna have to do.”

The girl smiles wide at that, as if he gave her the biggest compliment and again Cheryl has to bite back a little laugh at that.

“We can go around the block, through the back on the opposite side of the building.” Archie suggests.

Sweet Pea nods, “Yeah, good idea. Hopefully it won’t have many walkers there.” He studies them for a few seconds and finally says, “We go into this alley and try to barricade the rest of the fence so in case something goes wrong, it’ll delay the walkers a little. Fangs and I are going up the fire escape and Archie can go with us since he knows the way and the room they’re in.” He looks at Archie at that who nods his agreement. “We go in and pick up the two of them. You,” he says, pointing at Cheryl, “and Toni will stay and take care of the barricade. Betty and Veronica stay at the other end of the alley in watch. Jughead stays in the car to take care of JB. And if all goes well, we’ll be leaving before the sunset. Sounds good?”

They all nod and each goes back to the car they were before. As Toni starts the car and follow Sweet Pea's down the street, Cheryl explains the plan to Veronica in the back seat, the only one who didn’t get out of the car. She, obviously, grunts under breath what makes Betty rolls her eyes, mouthing something probably cursing for someone to shut up the brunette. Cheryl raises an eyebrow at the blonde's change of mood around Veronica, holding a smile.

They ride for a few blocks and turn a corner, always trying to keep most silent as possible. Looking out of the window, Cheryl can see bodies scattered and garbage on the streets, abandoned cars, and the smell of death, even if lessened from inside the car. It’s like this is a graveyard. Sometimes it’s all too overwhelming, her mind drifts to Jason again, he doesn’t deserve to live in this world. Hell, none of them do. But he’s just a kid, didn’t even enjoy his life properly while he could.

Most times than she’d like to admit panic starts to rise in her chest, like right now. She tries to think positivity, have hope, but the relief she felt when the others agreed to help is starting to wear off. She holds the handle of the door squeezing it until her fingers turn white, trying to control her breathing. This is irrational, she doesn’t know where it’s coming from. Actually she knows, but is trying hard not to think of it. She closes her eyes tight and says over and over in her head _we’re gonna get him. Everything’s gonna be fine. We’ll survive._ But her mind insists on retort back _But for how long? Is this really the life you want to live? To Jason to live? What’ll happen when you-_

“Are you okay?” Toni’s voice breaks through Cheryl’s haze and she’s yanked out of dangerous thoughts. She eyes Toni who has a surprising soft expression on her face that Cheryl has never seen before. Cheryl quickly averts her eyes, she can deal with hostility, that’s easy. She dealt with it her whole life. But this simple worried question makes her overthink and it’s too much.

“Yeah,” she curtly answers in a whisper and breathes a long breath out.

From the corner of her eye she can see a frown on Toni’s face like she doesn’t believe her, but she doesn’t push. Thank god. She doesn’t think she’d be able to stop the involuntary tears starting to prick in the corner of her eyes if Toni pushed. She fights it back though, the tears that are here for absolutely no fucking reason. She hates this; her heart’s still slamming against her chest, her hands sweating and she feels like throwing up.

She feels a large hand on her right shoulder. Archie. He squeezes it through her coat. It helps, only if a little. It grounds her. She swallows and brings her hand over his, squeezing back.

She doesn’t realize they’re not moving anymore until she hears a door opening and slamming shut. Looking around, she sees they stopped the cars a little behind the alley that gives access to the side of the building and she has no other choice but to suck it up and follow with their plan.

Stepping out of the car, she notices they’re left in favorable positions so they can escape quickly. Everyone, except Jughead and JB, gets out of the cars. Some zombies that roam the street are alarmed by the noises, but they, avoiding drawing more attention, easily kill them.

Toni walks around the car and opens the trunk to pull out a clip for her gun, loading it, before they walk silently to the alley, Betty beside her, holding her axe tightly in her hands.

“What happened to your gun?” Cheryl asks. She remembers seeing Betty giving one to Toni in the car, but it wasn’t hers.

“I left it in the supermarket,” she says with a grimace. “I couldn’t get to it before they noticed us, and after, when you ran in the opposite direction of the exit, I ran after you, I didn’t even think of the gun.”

“Sorry.” She apologizes and Betty shrugs. Walking a few more steps, she takes her own gun out of the waistband of her jeans and hands it to Betty. She frowns at it, open her mouth to probably decline, but Cheryl raises her hand, shaking her head, “please, just in case.”

“Okay,” she sighs taking the gun and puts her hand on Cheryl’s shoulder. “We’ll get them out of there, don't worry.” The blonde says. Cheryl lets herself believe in her assurance and holds on. Fear is impossible to contain at times like these, but she can’t let it paralyze her. Just can’t.

When they reach the entrance of the alley, she breathes a sigh of relief seeing that there’s a fire escape stair at the side of the building. Sweet Pea walks over to her, unwinding a piece of barbed wire.

“Here,” he clears his throat, giving her the wire. “Use this on the fence, for more resistance.”

“Thanks,” Cheryl replies, walking ahead to the other end.

The silence on the streets means that they can hear the grunts in the distance. She eyes their biggest problem, the fence that has a huge hole in the middle. They walk through the alley, weapons in hand. Wandering in the small space near the fence is a zombie. Cheryl raises the bow, loading it with an arrow and quickly releases it to put down the creature before anyone had the chance to get close to it.

She watches as Sweet Pea, Fangs and Archie climb the steps of the rusty fire escape until they disappear where she assumes is the 3rd floor of the building.

Toni’s silent, watching, from behind some wet and abandoned wooden boxes, a massive herd of zombies grunt at the front of the building. They need to be quick to close the hole in the fence before the zombies hear or smell them. Toni stares at her and nods at the fence. They can't talk much without being noticed, but she understands. After retrieving her arrow from the dead’s head, she gets up quickly and, standing in front of the fence, she starts to pass the barbed wire at the ends of the opening.

The small but audible noise the fence is making alerts some zombies on the sidewalk. Cheryl barely has time to completely close the hole when a zombie crashes into the fence, trying to reach her. She’s startled, taking a step back. Toni instinctively pulls her by her coat behind the pile of boxes. A sigh of pain comes out of Toni’s lips when she puts her weight on one foot on the floor, and Cheryl remembers the injure she got weeks ago. Toni staggers to one side and smashes her back against the floor, taking Cheryl with her. She falls against Toni’s body, pressing her further into the pavement.

Putting her hands on each side of Toni’s head so that their heads don't collide, but still their faces are inches from each other. Cheryl can’t help the breath that hitches in her throat, definitely because of the fall and not anything else.

Like Toni’s brown eyes staring intensely at hers or the way she licks her lips and raises her eyebrows at Cheryl. Especially not that.

Cheryl feels her cheeks burning, and curses her pale skin more than ever knowing it definitely shows. She tries to get up, but Toni’s still holding her coat for dear life, Cheryl eyes her hand wrapped around her clothing and back at her.

As soon as Toni realizes what she’s doing, she releases the coat as if burned, clearing her throat. Cheryl shakes her head back to reality and finally pushes herself away from Toni’s body, she leans against the wall, staring at the opposite brick wall and refusing to look at Toni.

Their silence is only broken when another zombie crashes into the fence, probably wanting to find out what the other one is still growling at.

Toni is already moving to kill them, but Cheryl takes her by the arm, keeping her in place. 

“What?” she whispers frowning. 

“The street is too crowded, it’s going to make more noise and they’ll hear you.” She whispers back. Cheryl lifts her head a few inches to look over the boxes.

“The boys can't take much longer.” Toni replies, looking up the stairs then back. “This fence won’t last forever.”

A sound of metal rings through the street and she looks up to the source of it. The boys are finally in sight, starting to descend the stairs, first Archie with Jason in his arms hugging him like a koala. Behind him she sees Sweet Pea and Kevin, but he’s clutching his arm tight, she notices even from this far that he’s bleeding and her heart sinks. _Okay, don’t think the worst. Don’t think the worst. It’s not a bite_.

Sweet Pea is right behind Archie, when he puts his foot on an unstable step, the piece of metal making a shrill sound when it breaks and falls to the floor at the base of the fire escape. Sweet Pea slips down, but thankfully manages to regain his balance.

Unfortunately the loud noise only serves to attract more zombies, her eyes are fixed on the people descending the stairs and she doesn’t hear Toni calling for her. Only the second time when she says louder, “Cheryl!”

Cheryl looks at her and realizes she killed some zombies against the fence, but more and more are slamming on it, stretching their arms through the holes to try and reach them. “Shit,” she whispers under her breath.

“Help me with this.” Toni urges to her, going to stand at one end of a long piece of wood detached from a box. Cheryl, with her heart beating fast, goes to the other end. They lift it and place the wood against the fence, putting their weight on it to keep the creatures on the other side.

She supports her back against the wood and looks at Veronica and Betty to see them fighting two zombies. Cheryl can see even from this distance Betty’s trying to get rid of the hands of a zombie with a really disfigured face while Veronica is fighting another one, dripping black blood on her. From the frightened looks of both of them, she assumes they’re not the only ones there. She thinks about running to them to help, but she doubts Toni will manage to support the fence by herself with this amount of zombies trying to get in. Betty, in a quick movement, thrusts her axe into the zombie’s head and kicks it to the ground. Veronica awkwardly pushes the other one to the alley wall and presses it hard there. It’s clear that the brunette has close to none skills to kill zombies, so Betty quickly runs to her and finish it for her.

The zombies from the street behind the fence are growling ferociously and pushing it more forcefully. It gets harder and harder to hold on.

“Faster!” Toni screams to them coming down the stairs. She sees Veronica, at Betty’s side, waving at them to hurry, pointing at the street signaling more are arriving on the other side. She looks at Toni beside her, eyes filled with worry, but she still nods at Cheryl. “We got this,” she says breathless. Cheryl swallows hard and nods back, felling every bump against this wood on her back and shoulders so hard she knows she'll find bruises there tomorrow.

“Cheryl!” She hears Archie calling.

Cheryl quickly turns to face them on the fire escape. Archie just finished descending the stairs. He looks at her with wide eyes, cradling Jason’s head against his neck.

“Go!” she screams, still struggling with the fence. He is reluctant though, just taking small steps back. But he’s with Jason, he knows what he’s got to do. Sweet Pea’s right behind coming down the stairs and as soon as he steps on the ground he starts running to the cars, pulling Archie with him.

“No!” Jason cries out, turning in his arms to look at Cheryl.

“Now, Archie.” Cheryl shouts, pleading with her eyes.

He sighs heavily and starts running as fast as he can through the alley. She looks up and sees the others still got a bit to go, since Fangs is helping Kevin descend, who doesn’t really look steady on his feet.

Suddenly the sound of a gunshot on the far side of the alley alarms the zombies in front of them even more. Cheryl risks looking back, but sees nothing but the empty alley.

Where is the rest of the group? She hopes they manage to get into the car. Her heart sinks just imagining the worst scenarios. 

Then another shot echoes, the shrill sound irritating the zombies more and more and they push harder against the fence.

Fangs and Kevin are finally at the bottom of the stairs. They don’t waste time and start to run, Fangs supporting Kevin’s weight with his arm over his shoulder.

Suddenly the amount of strength forcing the fence makes Toni and Cheryl slip with the weight on them, and makes a panic rise on Cheryl. It’s just a matter of time now, there’s more and more zombies pilling up. Toni takes a deep breath and manages to straighten up, wrapping an arm around Cheryl’s waist to help put her on her feet as well.

Sweet Pea's screams and the gunshot at the end of the alley warns them that there’s still company on their side as well. Toni and Cheryl look at each other, fearful. They have to let go and run like never before in their lives anytime now. She turns her head, eyeing the end of the alley, just to make sure that Fangs and Kevin are almost at the end and looks back at Toni.

“On three,” she whispers and Toni nods, taking a deep breath.

“One… Two… Three!”

They let go at the same time, turning in a matter of seconds and start running. Cheryl can already listen to the fence giving way. The fierce grunts grow louder, she won’t risk looking back sure that the fear at the sight would paralyze her. Toni’s still limping slightly, but that doesn't stop her from running this time.

“Holy shit!” Sweet Pea shows up at the end of the alley and stammers looking wide eyed and terrified at the herd behind them.

“Run!” Toni yells at him and he seems to come back to himself, he turns and starts desperately running towards the car, urging the others to do the same. 

The air is stuck in Cheryl’s lungs. Her legs are shaking. Everything is moving so fast, her heart’s beating wildly. When they turn the corner out of the alley she has to swallow a whimper, there’re at least half a dozen zombies there, not counting the one already dead on the floor.

Cheryl immediately shrugs her bow off her shoulder as she takes their surroundings. She aims and with deadly accuracy hits a zombie between the eyes, making their way almost clear to go to the car. She forces her legs to run faster, not even bothering to retrieve her arrow.

Betty opens the passenger door for her and quickly slids into the back seat, Cheryl looks inside the car seeing Jason there as well, his wide eyes fixed on her and she breathes a sigh of relief. On the other side of the car, Archie's also sliding into the back seat, pulling Jason into his lap to make room for Veronica, who is yelling at Toni to hurry up.

Sweet Pea is already starting his car ahead of them, he accelerates running over a few zombies on the way. Cheryl quickly throws herself into the car and slams the door shut, looking out of the window she notice how close the herd is to them.

It would be an understatement to say that zombies are coming out of everywhere.

Turning around in the car, she looks for Toni who had to run around it to get into her seat.

Toni loses a few seconds to open the door and Cheryl’s heart skips a beat at the sight in front of her. Toni’s back is to the street and right behind her there’s a zombie. _Literally_ right behind her. Its hands going to grab her arms. Its face moving down, inches away from her shoulder, rotten teeth on display.

Without thinking twice Cheryl raises her bow awkwardly in the small space on the front seat of the car until it’s level, not even making sure her arrow is properly adjusted, she draws the string back and takes aim. In this moment Toni looks up at her with wide eyes, Cheryl almost lets out a really inappropriate laugh at that. What must be going through her mind? That Cheryl’s going to shoot her?

She releases the string. The arrow flies passed Toni and hits the zombie right in its left eye. Toni throws her body against the car, she looks back at the creature behind her and kicks the dead weight on its stomach, getting hid of its body to finally close the door.

Not wasting any time she starts the car and speeds up, making her way through a bunch of zombies in the middle of the street, crashing the bumper on them. The bodies roll over the hood, spilling drops of blood all over the windshield. Toni quickly turns up the wipers to clean it while skidding around the corner to another street where they can see Sweet Pea car’s speeding up ahead and few zombies on the way. Then Toni looks at Cheryl and finally they share a much needed sigh of relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this took longer than expected. Really sorry about that.  
> I hope you liked it though! Comments are always appreciated. See you soon! xx


	5. indeed a family

_"We are unusual and tragic and alive.”_   
_-Dave Eggers_

You know how they say that when you’re about to die you see your whole life go by in front of your eyes? Sometimes Toni wonders if that’s true. She thinks about it more and more often lately. Wondering if she’ll see her childhood, her parents, the people she loves. Or if that’s all bullshit and her brain won’t even process the information of being near death until it’s too late and it’s all just darkness all of the sudden.

Honestly she doesn’t know what would be the better option.

Tightening her hands on the steering wheel, Toni breathes evenly as she drives along the empty streets. Night has already fallen surrounding everything around them, but she can still see Sweet Pea’s car right in front of them, following him to wherever it is that he’s heading.

From the corner of her eyes she can see Cheryl turning her body to stare at the back seat. Her brother looks at her with teary eyes, head still buried on Archie’s chest, but otherwise safe and sound.

Cheryl takes Jason’s little hand, smoothing it a little with hers and places a light kiss on his knuckles.

It's kind of cliché, but Toni can’t help think about it; how sometimes you only value people when you're about to lose them. And losing people is all that happens nowadays, now more than ever the world keeps taking people from you. And if you haven’t yet turned into a psychotic killer or a walker, your main goal is probably to keep the people you love close and try to survive amid the terror on Earth right now.

You only value your things when you lose them. You only value your home when you become a nomad, running from place to place, never staying somewhere long enough. You only value your clothes when you _need_ it to protect yourself from the cold or you’ll die from it. You only value your food when you haven't eaten for days. You only value your people when you find yourself alone.

Watching Cheryl kissing her brother's hand just makes her think about before, the fights, wars, persecutions and everything in between. These were all worthless; they don’t matter, not really and not anymore.

Now is all about moments like these. Hug and kiss your family and friends, say ‘I love you’ or ‘I missed you’ or ‘be more careful next time’. That’s what living means now. Take care of who is close. Toni sighs.

The minutes tick by as they drive through streets of the city. Some walkers, when hearing the sound of the cars, appear between the buildings and alleys, but, they don’t even pass near the vehicles with the steady speed they’re driving.

They slow down maybe an hour later, the whole drive made in silence, when Sweet Pea gets off the highway and takes an adjacent gravel road. The car's wheels making the typical friction noise against it.

The city they left behind is a big one, surrounded by countless other cities, which was a big problem. Big cities are synonymous to big herds. The western portion could be the solution, since it’s less inhabited and with a lot of forests, where they can get food from fruit trees, wood for heating and maybe some abandoned lodge for shelter. Well... at least it’s what they expect.

Toni analyzes the fuel gauge and sighs, she has less than half a tank.

Sweet Pea then stops the car right in front of a country house, a path of white stones led to the main door and the large yard that surrounded the place, and no neighbours for miles. It has perfect, rustic details. Pine trees decorated the yard until the surrounding forest. The house has a front porch and dark wooden windows. She can’t see more than that since the place is only illuminated by the light of the moon. Clearly a rich family’s property.

Toni parks the car behind Sweet Pea’s, the streets are totally empty, but she can’t be sure what’s the situation inside the house.

They all get out of the cars then, Toni takes a deep breath of the cold hill air. At least here the smell of death is not ingrained.

"Hey," Sweet Pea's voice breaks the silence of the street, he and Fangs walk up to them beside her car. “Is everyone okay there?”

“Yeah…” They’re all in one piece, just looking a lot tired and she’s not far behind. Jason fell asleep in the middle of the car trip. He’s still on Archie’s arms, hugging him like a koala and snoring slightly.

“What about Kevin? What happened up there?” Betty asks, walking in the direction of a man she assumes is Kevin leaning against the trunk, he looks really pale from the blood loss. The injure on his arm is wrapped tightly with a white piece of cloth covered in blood.

“There was a walker in the hallway.” Fangs answers, “It’s not a bite or anything,” he adds hurriedly when Cheryl lifts her head looking desperate at him. “Sorry.”

Sweet Pea sighs, “He bumped hard against the door trying to get rid of it and not let it into the room. The stitches came undone.” Toni thinks about those creatures, they used to be injured, stupid and too clumsy to go up or down stairs, but not anymore, they’re more hungry and aggressive each day. “Oh wait,” He suddenly says, as if remembering himself, and takes a black gym bag from his shoulder that Toni doesn’t recognize and hands it to Cheryl. “We took it from the apartment.”

“Oh thank you.” Cheryl takes the bag, holding it by the shorter straps, “I didn’t even see you carrying it before. Really, thanks… for everything.”

“It’s nothing, and you were preoccupied with other things.” He replies smiling and nodding at the sleeping child.

Toni sees Fangs handing a backpack to Betty as well. She nods, thanking him too and looks around the street and the house in front of them, “So, where are we?”

“I’m not sure, we just needed to distance ourselves from the city and find somewhere safe. I stopped when I saw this house, it looks good and it’s really quiet here.”

They stay a few second in silence, Toni looks at Sweet Pea to find him staring at her. She knows what he wants to suggest and she is too tired to fight it. Toni then relents and says it herself.

“Look, we’re all tired,” she says, “The kid is already asleep, Kevin can barely walk right now. We all need a safe place and it’s already night, so it would be easier for us to be together tonight.”

“Yeah,” Betty murmurs in a tired sigh, “I don’t think I have the strength to fight any other herds.”

“Fine by me.” Kevin whispers, he seems like he’s only standing because of Betty arm around his waist holding him up.

“Cheryl, you okay with that?” Sweet Pea asks, but Cheryl isn’t looking at them anymore, Toni follows her eye of sight to what she’s staring at. JB is sitting in the edge of the back seat of Sweet Pea’s car, Jughead crouched in front of her.

Toni can see that JB is having trouble breathing. Having another asthma attack. Toni sighs, they’ve been more frequent now. Jughead puts his hand on her shoulder probably asking her to calm down and lean her body forward, he places her elbows against her knees so she can breathe better. That’s about all he could do to help her.

Archie clears his throat and pokes Cheryl with his shoulder to get her attention back. She shakes her head looking back at Sweet Pea, “Sorry, what was it?”

“Do you agree with all of us staying here?” Sweet Pea asks again, pointing with his head to the house. “Just for the night, tomorrow you can leave or we take you to wherever you want.”

“Uhm,” Cheryl hesitates for a few seconds.

Nervously, she plays with the string of the bow across her chest. She looks at Jason sleeping soundly then at Archie who just shrugs slightly, careful not to wake the kid. Cheryl sighs and nods, “Okay, we can help you clear the house then.”

“Right.” Sweet Pea replies, he studies the house a little and says, “Me and Fangs will go check the left side, Toni and Veronica check the right. You and Betty go inside and we’ll get in through the back and meet you there, okay?”

“Right,” Cheryl says shrugging the bow off her back, she puts her gym bag on the hood of the car and starts following the path leading to the front door with Betty beside her.

Toni and Veronica go to the right side, walking the length of the house and she sees through the windows Cheryl and Betty starting to search the place, looking for any unwanted occupant inside. 

“Should we trust them?” Veronica whispers beside her.

Toni shrugs as she watches the surrounding woods, keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of trouble. They walk to the back area, where there’s an abandoned pool, its water is green and dirty, lots of leaves floating on it.

“Toni, I'm serious!”

“I don't know,” she whispers back, stopping in front of the pool. She takes her eyes away from the forest behind it and looks at Veronica, “But Sweets seems to trust them, so...”

“But that Cheryl, wasn't she the one who robbed you?” She replies looking behind her. They see Sweet Pea and Fangs finally made it to the back yard, they look at Toni and Veronica frowning, question in their eyes but Toni gesture for them to go inside already. They go, opening the back door, slipping inside the house and Veronica continues, “What if she steals from us again?”

“Veronica… I know,” she says, more firmly and not whispering anymore, everything appears to be clear anyway. Not even a walker around and Toni’s finally able to relax for a few seconds. “But they have a child and a sick man. What could we do?” she runs her hand through her hair feeling both sweat and a goo that’s probably blood. Toni makes a disgusted face, she needs to wash it ASAP. “We’re not making vows of eternal friendship, it’s just one night.”

“Even so-” she tries again, but Toni interrupts her.

“Why are you insisting on this so much? I'm tired and I’m sure you’re too. They’ll just spend the night, we’ll keep an eye out, okay? It’s gonna be alright.”

Toni turns on her back, not giving time to the brunette speak again and walks in the direction of the back door.

She finds the other four on the living room and they look up when Toni walks into the room, “All good?”

“All is clear here, no zombie.” Cheryl says, she looks through the windows on the front to the rest of the group. Toni can see even from this far everyone outside, Kevin still leaning against the car, Archie with Jason sleeping on his arms is talking with Jughead and JB is probably inside the car. “I’m going to get the others.” Cheryl says, moving to the door and stepping out into the front porch.

“This house has a lot of windows,” Sweet Pea says, with a worried expression, he grabs his shotgun and places on the counter separating the living room from the kitchen. “On one hand it’s good, we can easily see if someone’s coming. But the problem being they can come in very easily too.”

“We’ll be quiet, don't worry.” She pats him on the shoulder. In this moment Veronica shows up from the back, a scowl on her face. She sits on a couch in front of an empty fireplace, letting out a heavy sigh.

“What’s up with her?”

“She’s just worried about our safety,” Toni replies looking outside and seeing Cheryl leading everyone else towards the house.

In reality she doesn’t know how to feel about this. She’s trying to hold a grudge against the redhead, but she can feel the anger she felt earlier slipping away. Maybe it’s because their group is so vulnerable right now or Toni’s just tired and the rage will come back once she slept. She doesn’t know and she doesn’t intend on spending more time thinking about it.

“We’ll be okay.” Sweet Pea says matter-of-factly.

Maybe about half an hour later everyone had already collected their belongings from the cars and settled inside the house. The wooden floor and the curtains are dusty - just like everything else around. The caramel-colored furniture still holds memories as well as the walls, full of photographs of a family; the parents and three kids and sometimes a dog showed up in the pictures too. This means maybe no one came here after the beginning of the Apocalypse, everything seems too put together, nothing out of place.

Since there’re more people now and they can’t all be in one single room. The house has a master bedroom and three others, so they decided to spread out in the rooms once they all go to sleep and leave always two people on guard simultaneously since the house is so large.

The lights coming from the fire illuminate their tired faces through the shadows. Everyone is gathered in the huge living room, Cheryl's group on one side sharing some food among themselves, what they had managed to get thanks to the redhead's crazy decision to rescue her backpack earlier today. She had waken Jason up to get him to eat something, but he soon fell sleep again after.

Her own group is on another side, like there’s an invisible wall separating them from Cheryl’s all of the sudden, but still close enough to everyone get warm by the fire. They have very little in comparison when it comes to food, there wasn’t much in the fridge and in the house's stock they only found some canned beans and moldy breads, the last one they didn’t dare to eat.

Toni gets up, and sits on the entrance window seat, pressing her knees to her chest. She watches everything outside, it all looks the same, no sign of walkers or people there. They were afraid the fire would attract someone, but it was a risk they willed to take anyway.

She looks inside again, Veronica is leaning against the couch, her eyes closed but not sleeping, Sweet Pea and Jughead are talking to each other softly, and Fangs and JB are playing rock paper scissors. Toni shakes her head, a little smile forming on the corner of her lips at how this group became indeed a family. 

Her gaze shifts to the other end of the room, more precisely to the people sitting or leaning against another couch. They also seem fairly close, like a family of their own. Toni noticed this, how they are really protective of each other. Not only Cheryl with Jason, but all of them. Like they were losing two brothers as well, if they were left in that apartment.

Kevin is sitting on an armchair, he looks a lot better than before after Betty stitched him back up and he got some food. Jason’s sleeping calmly with his head on Cheryl’s lap and his legs throw on Betty’s.

Even in the low light, Toni can see that Cheryl shows a little smile on her face while stroking her brother's hair. Again she tries to remember the anger she felt, from earlier. But, she really can't feel it now as she watches Cheryl, oblivious to everything around her but her brother.

Her smile is beautiful. This one right now, it’s sincere. The kind of smile that’s rarely seen these days.

Archie, who is sitting on the floor leaning against the sofa right in front of Jason, suddenly looks up at her. Toni quickly snaps her eyes away looking out of the window, but he must’ve seen her blatantly staring.

She curses herself for even stare in the first place. She hears whispers coming from them on the other side of the room, and from the corner of her eyes she sees Archie getting up carefully and, dodging the furniture, he walks over to her. _Great._

“Hey,” he says, offering her a smile.

“Hi,” she replies hesitantly.

Archie laughs a little, “Here,” he places on the window seat beside her three bottles of water and four tins of canned food. How he was carrying all of that with his bare hands she has no idea. Toni looks at it surprised. She really wasn’t expecting that. What she was expecting was some sort of attempt of an intimidating _don’t stare at us or else._

“What,” she whispers, still surprised. “Archie, I can't accept that.”

“I know you only had what you found in this house, Toni. Besides, you guys saved our lives today. It's the least I can do.”

The redhead man does have a gentle smile on his face. Archie is tall and muscular, Toni thinks he can be really intimidating if he wanted to, but he has a kind demeanor that’s easily noticed when he’s not on protective mode.

“You have a child and a sick guy to feed.” Toni shakes her head with a sigh.

“You do too, okay? The kid,” Archie replies, “she didn’t seem well earlier. Just take it. It’ll be okay.”

“Uhm...” she stammers, “Are you really sure? People of your group won’t be angry?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

Archie looks confused, but seems to soon realize about who she’s asking about, “Don’t worry about that. It wasn’t my idea, I just agreed.” He smiles and turns away walking over to where he was before.

She watches him leave, her gaze moving to look at Cheryl who is not looking at their direction and staring pointedly at the fire.

She shakes her head and refuses to think about it, taking the three bottles and four cans awkwardly in her hands. She walks a few steps and puts them on the floor next to her friends.

A long time later, probably midnight, they’re all fed and most of them already in the rooms to sleep.

“Aren't you going to eat?” Sweet Pea asks, approaching her. Toni’s still in the same place, looking out the window while the small plate is beside her on the seat, still untouched. “Or sleep?”

“Go ahead, Sweets.” she says, trying to smile, but without much success. “I'll take the first shift. I still have to finish eating anyway.”

“Are you sure?” He asks, looking worried. But his eyes are already heavy, giving away his tiredness.

“Yeah, you can go. I’ll wake you when it's my turn to sleep.”

It’ a white lie, she doesn’t intend on calling him anytime soon. He deserves to rest more than anyone, he already spent all of last night awake.

“Okay.” He whispers, walking towards the room he’s sharing with Fangs.

Toni faces the dark again, risking eating a little. She knows she won't be able to stand tomorrow if she doesn't restore her strength now.

She finishes eating and the fatigue hits her, but for some reason she just can’t sleep. She feels so tired but also wide awake.

It was such an exhausted day, Toni really didn’t expect to almost die twice when she left the apartment this morning. Sometimes she questions the purpose of it all. Why keep surviving? Months passed and no aid that the government had promised has been made. She shakes her head, casting out those thoughts from her head, she has her friends. _Her family_. That’s why they’re surviving.

She shudders, feeling a presence behind her in the dark. “Who's there?” her voice comes out weak and she clears her throat.

“I didn't mean to scare you.” Cheryl's voice echoes in the room.

Cheryl moves in front of her and the moonlight finally reaches her face, it’s dim but enough for Toni to see her clear.

“Can I join you?” the redhead asks, hesitantly. “Sweet Pea apparently already went to sleep. We agree two people should stay on the lookout right?”

Toni clears her throat again and nods. She moves a little to the side on the window seat as soon as Cheryl steps closer, allowing her to sit as well, which she does folding one leg under her, copying Toni and look through the window.

“Anything out there?” she asks after a few seconds in silence. 

“No. Everything the same.”

Silence settles again. The only sounds are coming from the crickets outside. She casts a look at Cheryl again, she is biting the inside of her cheek, staring outside but not really looking at anything. Like she’s thinking something over.

She’s not wearing her usual “I take no shit” expression on her face, giving place to something Toni can’t decipher yet. Her face profile lighted up by the moonlight is somehow mesmerizing.

Cheryl suddenly opens her mouth to speak and turns to look at Toni, catching her stare. Toni quickly looks away again. What the fuck?! Second time in less than a few hours she’s caught staring at this fucking girl. She can already feel her cheeks heating up and rolls her eyes internally at herself.

Toni hears Cheryl clearing her throat, trying to speak one more.

“I... uhm...” she stammers, clearing her throat again. “I wanted to thank you.”

So that’s what this is about, she raises an eyebrow looking at Cheryl again. Toni already embarrassed herself, she thinks she’s allowed to make this just a little bit harder for Cheryl.

“For what?” Toni asks innocently.

Cheryl sighs, realizing what she’s doing but answers anyway, “For saving my life today,” she looks down for a bit, fidgeting with her fingers and swallows when she raises her face again, locking eyes with Toni. “You went back inside the supermarket and helped us, and for coming back for Jason and Kevin.”

Toni releases a breath, licking her lips before speaking, “Okay,” she nods, “You're welcome, and well… if we’re counting, you saved me today as well.” Cheryl looks at her confusedly, “That walker in the car would’ve bitten me. Great shot by the way.”

She watches understanding washing over Cheryl's face and a proud smile on her lips at the complement, “Thanks.”

“And uhm… Look, you came back for me that day at the school so...” she trails off.

Cheryl grimaces, “About that, sorry for the…” she gestures her hand to her own temple then at Toni’s, pointing at the scar there, right above her eyebrow. Toni presses her lips together in amusement at Cheryl’s awkward apology attempt.

“Have you ever apologized to someone in your life?” she asks good-naturedly and Cheryl glares at her, “It just doesn’t seem like your area of expertise.”

She huffs, “I’m sorry, okay? For knocking you out and leaving you there,” she says with a suffered sigh but Toni can see a tiny smile on her lips. And Toni snorts a laugh, she also notices she doesn’t actually apologize for the stealing part, before Cheryl sobers her expression again and continues, “I just couldn't risk it. You could’ve killed me or followed me to where we were. A thousands assumptions crossed my mind, I didn't know how many were in your group and I did the first thing I thought of to keep that from happening.” She says all that really fast and has to take a deep breath when she finishes.

They stay a few seconds in silence, in which Toni moves her attention back to outside, she stares at a bird resting on the floor. When the bird finally takes flight she breaks the silence again.

“I thought that too,” Toni says quietly.

“What?” Cheryl asks, frowning.

“When we were inside that room. I also thought that you could’ve followed me.”

“Oh,” she whispers, “Even so... you didn’t do anything. I did.”

Toni folds her arms in front of her body and tries to avoid thinking about if she would do same, in case Cheryl hadn’t in that situation three weeks ago. She doesn’t want the answer to that, it already happened anyway, there’s nothing she can do about it. No need to pine over it now.

"Okay," Toni murmurs at last.

“Okay?” Cheryl asks, confused. She turns her face to Cheryl again, looking into her brown eyes. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, okay means okay, Cheryl.”

The redhead hesitates for a few seconds, still staring her. Then she simply nods and looks out of the window again. She leans her head against the wall and sighs at the moment of rest. Toni avoids looking at Cheryl, she wouldn’t be able to survive another embarrassing moment of being caught staring again in such a short time.

There’s suddenly a sound of footsteps coming from down the far hall, and she and Cheryl perk up, alarmed at the noise.

Fangs appears in the living room, holding a football. And Toni relaxes again when she sees it’s him, “Sorry, couldn’t sleep.” He says throwing the ball up and catching it when it comes down, “Found this in one of the rooms.”

“What? That’s what distracted you and you couldn’t sleep?” Toni asks, amusement in her tone.

Fangs smiles and point at her with the hand holding the ball, “Exactly. And if I woke Sweets up with it, he would’ve killed me.” He looks between Cheryl and Toni, she doesn’t know what’s in his mind and can’t really read his expression before he shakes his head and speaks again, “Shouldn’t one of you be at the back? Guarding that door?”

Cheryl looks at him, as coming out of a haze, “Yes, I should have. Just came to talk to you and I forgot.” She looks apologetically at him and Toni.

“Don’t worry about it,” Fangs intervenes, “I’ll take the back, one of you can go to sleep if you want.” And then he’s gone, still throwing that damn ball up and down, she just hopes he doesn’t break anything and startles everyone.

“You can go. It’s fine,” Toni says, looking at Cheryl, “I can’t sleep right now anyway.”

Cheryl hesitates a little but finally gets up and disappears around the corner.

Toni rests her head against the window frame trying not to think anything depressing, but that’s where her mind usually went unfortunately. After hours of just staring at nothing outside, she hears someone calling her name. It’s not day yet and the moon is far from disappearing at the sky.

She looks behind herself to see Betty, “Hey,” she says quietly, “Go to sleep, I can take it from here.”

Toni is ready to refuse but a yawn coming out of her mouth without her permission betrays her. And despite her reluctance to go and lay down, she gives in. “Okay.”

She walks over to the corridor where the rooms are, her eyes already accustomed to the dark, she can see the silhouettes the furniture and not stumble on anything. All rooms are properly closed, except the one she knows Betty, Jason and Cheryl are sharing. When she gets near the doors, she sees Cheryl sneaking out of the room, and when she turns around she comes face to face with Toni.

“Jesus!” She whispers, placing her hand on her chest in shock.

“What are you doing?” Toni asks, suppressing a laugh and watches Cheryl walk over to her.

"I woke up when Betty got up and I... I went to get and give you this," the redhead whispers, in her hands are four white boxes tied together. “Here,” Cheryl passes Toni the boxes and she can hardly read in the dim light: _Berotec_. Her eyes widen in surprise. They are inhalers for asthma.

Two of them she remembers she had found in the school, it was in the backpack that Cheryl stole, but the other ones she doesn’t know where it came from.

“I didn’t imagine that someone in your group would need it so much,” She says, “JB… I saw her before in the car, I recognized it. She has asthma, right?”

Toni doesn’t respond, just gives Cheryl a blank look and she sighs, averting her gaze, “When I took that backpack from you, I was desperate. My brother was sick and Kevin too,” she stops suddenly and takes a deep breath, looking Toni in the eye again, “I’m not trying to justify it. I know it was really fucked up, but I’m just saying I had my reasons.”

She walks back to her room and closes the door. Toni watches her leave before shaking her head, deciding to not look a gift horse in the mouth and walks to the room where JB is. 

She opens the door carefully so as not to alarm anyone. She sees JB and Veronica on the bed. Jughead is lying on a armchair and he looks up as she walks into the room.

Toni reaches up to him, "Hey," she whispers when she’s close enough.

Jughead stares at her, confused. She places the four medication boxes on the nightstand beside him and his eyes widen when he recognizes the label.

“How did you get this?” he asks, sitting up straight. 

Toni doesn’t say anything, he knows the only place she could’ve got it from.

“Thank you,” Jughead says anyway.

She gives him a tired smile and gets out of the room, going to the one Fangs and Sweet Pea were sharing, since the first is now on watch, this is the only place available, not that she minds.

Entering the room, she makes out the figure on the bed as being Sweet Pea snoring slightly, she takes off her boots and her jacket and lies down next to him, finally closing her eyes, feeling all the exhaustion at once and breathes out a sigh of relief.

Not long after that, Toni falls asleep and surprisingly doesn’t wake up until Sweet Pea does hours later complaining about the fact that she didn't wake him up.


	6. compartmentalize and ignore it

_"And yet to every bad there is a worse.”_   
_-Thomas Hardy_

The next morning is cold, as were the others before. The smell of grass contributing to a few moments of tranquility and rest, birds are singing in the background and it almost makes Cheryl feel she’s back home. Almost.

That is, if it wasn’t for the fact that she’s now sharpening the end of pieces of wood with her knife to make herself more arrows, since she lost two of them yesterday on the herd attack.

Cheryl’s sitting comfortably against a tree at the entrance of the forest where she can still see the house and keep an eye on the woods for any sign of danger. Even though they didn’t found any zombie here yesterday and until now none showed up, she’s still worried it’s a matter of time before that happens, this place is a bit too open for her liking.

Hearing sounds of footsteps on the grass and breaking branches, she looks up to see Archie walking up to her through the trees holding more wood with the right length to turn into arrows and dropping them beside Cheryl, “There.”

He slouches down as well, sitting crossed legged in front of her and immediately picks up one piece and begins to whittle it to the right shape.

“I could hear running water down there, maybe a river or something. I didn’t see it, but it can’t be too far from here.” He says, gesturing with his hunting knife to the forest, “It’s probably down east.”

“You shouldn’t be going too far into woods alone, you know.”

“I didn’t go too far.” Seeing the look that Cheryl’s giving him, he reassures, “Really. I didn’t find anything we could eat though, maybe closer to the water we’ll be luckier and find some fruit or animals.”

Cheryl sighs, “Yeah, hopefully.”

She pauses when the wood-turned-arrow is pointed enough, running her thumb over the edge. She places it beside her along with the rest of her arrows, most of them she made herself, since she already lost the majority of her original carbon shafts ones to zombies throughout the apocalypse.

She looks at the house, seeing her group on the porch, Betty sitting of a chair with Jason on her lap, talking to Kevin. The others are all inside, their groups barely interacting since wakening up. Sighing again, she thinks back to the food problem. They still have some, even after eating breakfast this morning, but it won’t last ‘til tomorrow, for sure. Maybe they can go by the river Archie mentioned before leaving or take their chances in some other house around. It’s not really a soothing thought.

“You alright?” Archie questions, bringing her out of her mind and Cheryl realizes she’s been staring at nothing for longer than she thought since Archie already had two arrow made pointed, handing it to her.

“I’m fine,” she replies much too quickly, taking the arrows and putting all of it in her quiver.

“Hmm,” he glances back at Cheryl curiously, playing with his knife on the ground, “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you, but with everything that happened yesterday…” He shakes his head, turning his gaze to the house for a few seconds and then back at her, “You met Toni before, right?”

Cheryl sighs heavily, averting her eyes. She knew this would come, but she certainly doesn’t wanna talk about it either. She also knows that Archie won’t insist if she said that, but maybe they just need to get this out of the way and have this conversation, so Cheryl nods.

“Why didn’t you say something to me?”

“It didn’t seem necessary.”

“You told Betty.” He says immediately.

Cheryl narrows her eyes at him, “She told you what happened?” At his nod, she throws him a confused look, “Then why are you asking?”

“I didn’t ask what happened, just why you didn’t tell me.”

Cheryl looks down and picks up a branch on the grass, breaking it in smaller pieces just to have something to do, she releases a breath and shrugs before answering, “I don’t know… I think I just didn’t want you to think less of me.”

They’re silent for a few moments, Cheryl still really committed to breaking the branches like it’s the most important work she’s ever done, until Archie breaks the quiet with a snort.

“That’s cute,” Archie teases, when she looks at him Cheryl sees a smirk on his face.

“Shut up,” She mutters and throws all the little pieces of wood in her hands on him, which only makes him laugh as he protects his face with his arm.

“Okay okay, stop.” He says a little breathless from his laugher which only makes Cheryl glare and want to slap him further, “I don’t think less of you, alright.” He smirks and says more smugly, “Since my opinion is sooo important to you.”

“It’s really not,” Cheryl rolls her eyes while Archie laughs, “I’m seriously about to stab you.” She threats him with an arrow teasingly, until he raises his palms indicating surrender.

Lost in their banter, she barely notices someone approaching them. Seeing movement from the corner of her eyes, she looks at her side and watches as Sweet Pea and Fangs make their way towards them, already halfway from the house to the forest.

She glances at Archie, who is now staring at the two men as well, all signs of amusement off his face.

When they finally reach the forest, Cheryl and Archie stand up to be on their level.

“We want to talk to you two about something.” Sweet Pea says. She thinks she has an idea of what they’re going to say. Sweet Pea looks better than yesterday, calmer somehow, more well-rested. Fangs flashes them a gentle smile, he seems to always be in a good mood, something that Cheryl really doesn’t get.

“If it’s about us, we were just finishing up here,” Cheryl says, cleaning her hands from the dirty floor on her jeans, “I was going to ask the others to pack up their things and-”

“No, no. It's not that!” Sweet Pea says, widening his eyes. Shacking is hands up quickly in front of him.

“Well?”

“Look,” Sweet Pea begins, rubbing the back of his neck and throwing a glance at Fangs. “Well, we came to ask that, if you want, you guys can stay here longer.”

Cheryl blinks in surprise. And he’s quick to continue.

“I'm not saying to unite our groups or whatever. I just realized that you are... uhm... like, decent people?”

Archie snickers beside her, “That because we didn’t murder you guys in your sleep, is that what you mean?” He says, an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

Jesus, he has to say it like that?! Cheryl slaps Archie’s arm lightly with the back her hand, glaring at him.

“I wouldn’t put it like that, but he’s right. You don’t really know much about us. What makes you trust us like that?” Cheryl asks.

“We know you all really care about each other,” Fangs says, stepping closer to the three, “It’s clear. And you would do anything to protect them. See… in the world, right now, there’s walkers and there’s people. And then there’s the good guys and the bad guys, and I know you’re the good, if we stay together we can protect each other.” He says frantically and has to take a deep breath, moving his eyes between Archie and Cheryl, “I strongly believe that we can’t close ourselves to the world, because if we do, it’ll definitely close off to us.”

And there it is again, the optimism and good mood that Cheryl really doesn’t understand and doesn’t seem to share.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to give in to his Disney movie speech, but life is not a fairytale, it never was, at least not for her, and she seen enough bad to not be wary now.

“And being practical, you have a child and the injured guy. I don't understand much about it, but I know that his cut isn’t superficial. And you don't have a car.” Sweet Pea points out.

“So what do you have in mind?” Archie asks, crossing his arms in front of his body.

“You can stay here for a few more days. We will anyway. And we’re offering an allegiance in the meanwhile.” Sweet Pea answers, “We talked to Toni earlier and she agrees.”

“Seriously?” Cheryl replies, a little sarcastic. Because even though they were somewhat civil last night, she still thought Toni couldn’t wait to get rid of them, of her, already. “I find that a little hard to believe.”

“Toni just has a temper,” Sweet Pea says, shrugging. He puts his hands in the pockets of his slightly dirty jeans. “Deep down she just wants to protect all of us.”

“Do the others agree with that?” Archie asks.

“Most of them,” he says, and Cheryl raises her eyebrow at that. “Don’t worry, I’m not dictating them but they trust who I trust.” Sweet Pea breaths out, looking behind him to the house. “Besides we can't stop our travel either, so we won't be here for long.”

Cheryl frowns, wanting to ask him what their travel or destination will be. But truthfully it’s none of her business. If they stay here, they’ll only be together for a few more days, and though it pains her to admit it, Sweet Pea is right, they are weak right now, with a kid, Kevin is still not 100%, there’re no other houses around, they’re in the middle of nowhere and they have no means to travel.

She looks at Archie trying to read what he’s thinking and maybe he’s getting at the same conclusion she and these boys in front of them did. He returns her look, she tries to convey what she’s thinking and gives him slight nod. The situation will be temporary anyway and they can leave whenever they want. It won’t be that bad. Archie takes a deep breath and nods his head, but more to himself than to her, deciding which course to take.

“Okay then.” Archie agrees. “We’ll stay.”

“Great!” Fangs replies, smiling broadly.

Sweet Pea rolls his eyes, but can barely suppress a tiny smile at the shorter man enthusiasm.

“Okay, see you around.” Sweet Pea says and then the both of them start to walk through the yard back to the house.

As Cheryl watches them leave, she sees Betty and Kevin staring at them on the porch, her gaze moves to the windows at the side of the house, more specifically the living room, and she sees some of the others also staring, Toni being one of them. Cheryl sighs, and turns to pick up her stuff on the floor.

“Some audience, hum.” Archie muses as they make the same way the boys did to the house and inform their group of the new development.

They barely step into the porch when Betty voices, “What was that about?”

She lets Archie explain everything to them, she leans against the porch railing as Jason gets up to stand close to her. Cheryl runs her hand through his red hair giving him a little smile. It’ll be for the best, staying here a bit longer, gather their strength then continue their path to the CDC.

When Archie finishes, there’s a moment of silence then he asks, “So… any objection?”

“We’re staying?” Jason asks him.

“Only if you want, kid. But it’s not forever, just for a few more days.” Archie smiles at him.

Jason raises his shoulders in a small shrug. “Here is cool. I don’t mind.”

They look at Betty then, who just nods and murmurs an “Okay,” and at Kevin, he had woken up not long ago, after sleeping all night because of the meds for the infection. His skin is less pale, but below his eyes some dark circles are still present.

“Well... We don't have many options, do we?” he answers, gesturing at himself with a guilty smile.

“It’s not your fault, Kev.” Cheryl is quick to appease his thoughts, “Even if you weren’t sick, it’d still be hard to move as we are from here.”

He nods, but doesn’t seem to believe her as he goes back to leaning against the wall, closing his eyes.

“We should go back inside, right?” Betty suggests, “You need rest.”

“Go on, I’ll stay outside.” Archie comments before stepping into the yard again.

“Okay, let’s go.” Cheryl agrees, taking Jason’s hand and walks through the door. Outside is also really cold and even though Jason already got better from the pneumonia, she doesn’t want to take any risks.

They walk in the direction of the rooms, the others inside the house had already dispersed from watching through the window.

“When we going to shower?” Jason asks, when they reach the room Archie and Kevin are sharing, as he throws himself at the bed.

“We need to find clean water first, JayJay, you know that.” Cheryl murmurs, tapping his legs for him to move to give Kevin room to lie down. “This house doesn’t have it.”

“I'm still hungry.” He whispers with a pout.

Cheryl sighs, “I know.”

She looks for Archie’s gym bag on the floor since she moved everything from her own backpack to it yesterday. Looking for the food they still have, thinking that now that they’re going to stay here longer, they’ll need to go on supplies searches. She takes out a cereal bar from the bag and gives it to Jason.

Maybe an hour or so later, Toni walks over to the room and knocks on the door jamb, getting their attention.

“We’re going out to harvest fruits or hunt.” She murmurs, finishing dressing her jacket and with a backpack in her hands. “Anyone want to come? Archie’s already going with Fangs.”

“I'll go.” Cheryl answers, standing up.

“You leaving again?” Jason’s small voice stops her from walking out. She turns to look at him, her heart clenching.

“Just for a little bit. They’ll stay here with you, okay?” Cheryl says, nodding her head to Betty and Kevin, “It’s not gonna be like yesterday.”

“You promise?” He asks, eyes wide watching her every move. Cheryl doesn't want to promise him anything. Not about something she isn't sure about. She sighs and does it anyway.

“Yeah, I promise.” she whispers, leaning over to place a kiss on the top of his head. When she turns to the door, she sees Toni watching them. She quickly averts her eyes though and starts walking in the direction of the front door before Cheryl could say anything.

She hears a snort from behind her, probably Betty, but Cheryl ignores it, taking her bow and quiver and follows Toni outside.

In front of the house, Sweet Pea is standing in front of one car with the hood lifted while he works on something in the engine. As they cross the garden, she also sees Archie walking beside Fangs into the forest.

“Let's go the other way.” Toni says, getting into the woods a little far from where Fangs and Archie did.

Cheryl nods and they enter the coniferous forest, dodging some bushes that are in the way, while they follow a slightly faded trail. Cheryl grabs her bow from her back and lets it ready in her hands as a precaution, seeing Toni drawing her knife as well and they keep walking in silence, going further into the forest.

“Look,” Toni murmurs, pointing to some mushrooms near a tree. Toni opens the backpack and crouches next to them.

“Aren’t there poisonous ones or like, hallucinogen?” Cheryl asks, watching her remove them from the floor and put them inside the backpack. “How do you know the difference for sure?”

“I don’t,” She replies, shrugging.

“Great.” Cheryl says, looking around for any trouble, “So we die or get high from eating it?”

Toni lets out a low chuckle, “Relax, Cheryl.” Toni says, looking up. She seems way calmer than the day before. “You can only be sure that a mushroom is edible, poisonous or hallucinogen in a lab. And well, I didn't see any open around, did you?”

Cheryl arches an eyebrow, with a look that says _Seriously, are you kidding me?_ at Toni and she laughs again, closing the backpack and standing up.

Seeing Toni in a good mood is starting to throw her off, she wonders if Fangs optimism is contagious. Will Archie come back singing Christmas songs or something? She doesn’t think she can take it.

“I'll take that as a no.” Toni replies with the little smile still hovering in the corner of her mouth. “But there’re some that we can recognize just by looking at color, texture, form. This one, it isn’t toxic.”

“How do you know this stuff?”

“Well,” Toni looks uncomfortable for a few seconds, as she places the backpack on her back and start walking again. “My uncle taught me.”

It’s clear she doesn’t want to talk about it, which is okay. It’s not like Cheryl is eager to share her past either.

“Hm, I feel better knowing we won’t get high after eating this.” Cheryl says, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah... it wouldn't be a good thing.” she murmurs, throwing a look behind her shoulder at Cheryl that she can’t really decipher.

They keep walking between the trees, sometimes stopping to collect some fruits they find, though no animal ‘til now. Fortunately, they don't come across any zombies.

Cheryl stops when she hears running water and nudges Toni, who frowns at her, “Hear this?” They stay extra silent for a few seconds until Toni’s frown dissipates as she listens, “Water. Archie said he had listened to it earlier, it shouldn’t be far.”

After a few more minutes, the sound of running water only getting louder, a short flash of golden light on the horizon catches her eyes, Cheryl and Toni stop walking when they come across a small cliff.

Across the edge of the horizon, the flowing river meanders below them like a painter’s lazy brushstroke, catching the light of the sun and glowing gold.

A calming feeling comes over Cheryl as she allows herself to admire the beautiful view. The wind coming from the east causes small waves to form in the seemly crystal clear water.

She narrows her eyes and follows its course; it takes a curve to the right where she can’t really see much of it, just the sand, rocks and trees that surround it, as to the other side it goes straight until she can’t distinguish it anymore.

“Do you reckon there’s fish here?” Toni's voice cuts through her thoughts. Cheryl looks at her to see she’s also watching the scene in front of them.

“I don’t know, but we’d need fishing gear for that. The water does look clean,” she notes, “We can come back with more people later to take water to the house.”

“Yeah,” She says. “Come on.”

Cheryl looks up, and watches Toni starting to walk down along the irregular path. Cheryl sighs, knowing it would be quite a challenge to get down there. She throws her bow over her shoulder and head, groaning as she starts to move between the rocks in search of places of stability to descend.

Making her way through some branches appearing in front of her, she tries not to slip every two seconds. Cheryl looks up seeing Toni walking ahead with a graceful coordination Cheryl doesn’t have for this type of thing.

Not paying attention where she stepped next; turns out not really a steady place. She slips on a loose rock on the ground but luckily doesn’t fall down thanks to a little tree she uses to hold for support.

“Shit,” she whispers breathless, closing her eyes, her heart beating through the roof. It wouldn’t have been pretty, there’s still a good 20 feet to climb down.

She hears a snort from ahead and opens her eyes to see Toni climbing up again. Cheryl glares at her and that stupid smirk.

“You okay?” Toni asks when she reaches Cheryl, standing in front of her. Like this, they got an even bigger height difference because of the slope.

“Yeah, all good.” She huffs.

Letting out another snort, Toni holds her hand out between them, waiting for Cheryl to take it. Cheryl glances at the outstretched hand, she hesitates a bit but accepts the help.

It’s easier now with Toni’s help and they start climbing down again, as Cheryl tries not to think too much about their hands clasped together.

She clears her throat and quickly removes her hand from Toni’s and start walking ahead, following the path to the river slowly until she fells Toni nudge her arm.

“Look,” She points. Cheryl follows her finger and sees a tent set up against the cliff a few feet to their right.

They take fearful steps until they're close enough to hear the faint growls inside the stall. Toni gives her a look and with her hand signals for her to stay in front of it. Cheryl grabs her bow, taking aim at the tent and she nods at Toni.

Toni crouches down and grabs her knife from the waistband of her jeans, and with a trembling hand grips the zipper on the tent.

The zombie doesn't struggle against it, which makes Cheryl think it’s probably stuck on something. The pink haired girl unzips it and they look inside.

“Oh god...” Toni whimpers, retracting her face back with a grimace.

Cheryl doesn’t see anything though, but the smell quickly reaches her nose.

Toni is still looking into the tent and not saying anything, so Cheryl walks to her side and crouches, putting her hand in front of her nose and mouth to diminish the stench as she looks inside as well.

When she sees what’s inside she freezes completely in shock, her heart clenching. In corner of the tent there’s a little body struggling in a car seat.

Her eyes tear up quickly at the sight of a baby not older than two years old with its arms outstretched wanting to reach them, white eyes and a typical grunt of a zombie leaving its mouth.

Cheryl wipes her tears and sees a piece of paper on the dirt floor: _Please take the baby with you._ Whoever was with the baby was probably bitten and went as far away from here before turning and hoped that someone would find him in time to save him.

She looks superficially for any bite marks or scratches on the baby that is still struggling, but she doesn't find any. She frowns, confused.

Toni runs a hand over her cheeks, and Cheryl realizes she let out some tears as well. She opens her mouths as if to say something but quickly closes and turns away leaving the tent immediately.

Cheryl hears the sound of her vomiting outside. She closes her eyes and winces in sympathy, giving the woman time. Ignoring the stench, she takes a step into the tent gathering the courage to do what is necessary.

She breathes out, grabbing an arrow tightening her grip on it and shoves the arrowhead into the side of its head, making it stop moving altogether seconds later.

She steps out of the tent and sees Toni still crouched, breathing hard. And for sure her stomach is churning too, but at least she kept what little she ate still inside of her.

Cheryl watches her get up abruptly and starts walking towards the river, cleaning her mouth with that water. She walks over to Toni and after a few seconds in silence she hears Toni asking quietly.

“How this doesn’t affect you?” 

“Of course it affects me,” Cheryl says, “But I’ve just always been good at compartmentalize and ignore it.”

Toni glances sideways at her, finally standing back up, “That can’t be healthy.”

Cheryl shrugs, “It’s not perfect.” She murmurs, thinking about times she feels so overwhelmed she can barely breathe. But she quickly shakes her head getting rid of those thoughts, “There was something weird though.”

“What?”

“The baby. It didn’t have any bite or scratches marks on him. And honestly if any zombie got this close to him, it definitely wouldn’t have... anything left, there was no way he could defend himself, so how did he turn?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

Cheryl takes a deep breath looking at the river, away from the tent the air is way better, it smells like greenery and earth, just nature. “No, I guess not. I was just wondering.”

Toni looks around them, and lets out a sudden snort. Cheryl gives her puzzled look, narrowing her eyes.

“Over there.” She nods to one far end of the river and right before it takes a turn she sees it. Walking along the river shore are Archie and Fangs coming their direction.

When they see her looking they wave again. She glances at Toni, “Should we go to them or…?” she asks, trailing off.

“Nah,” she mutters with a little smile, “Let them do all the work.”

When the boys finally reach them, Cheryl sees Archie with two squirrels on his back tied with a string.

“So, you guys had some luck then?” Toni asks pointing at the squirrels.

“Yep, it was actually Fangs here, with his knife throwing ability,” Archie says.

“Thanks to many hours on bars playing darts.” Fangs says, causing them to let out a huffed laugh, and okay maybe Cheryl’s starting to warm up to his good mood. “What about you?”

“Some mushrooms and fruits.” Toni replies.

“You think we can wash in here?” Cheryl asks them, looking at the flowing river.

“I was hoping so,” Fangs groans, making a show of sniffing his shirt and grimaces, “I’ve never felt so dirty and not the good kind.”

Toni shakes her head with a smile at him, “It was kind of hard to get down here though,” Toni points out. “At least for her. This one almost fell down the cliff a few times.” She points of thumb at Cheryl.

Cheryl glares, “One time.”

Archie snorts, making her glare at him too, “You climbed down through here?” He points at the slope they came from a few feet away.

“Yeah.”

“From where we got down it’s much easier.” Fangs explains, “And I think it’s even closer to the house.”

“Let’s get going,” Archie says, turning around to walk to where they came from, everyone following close behind, “We can come back later to get water and bath, it’s barely noon yet.”

They all seem to agree with him as they walk back to the house. When they reach the place where they have to do a little climbing, Archie teases her about it being rewarded with a slap at the back of his head. But admittedly the climb is much easier.

In a few minutes they are back inside the house, unloading what they collected on the dinner table.

“Oh, you guys found a lot.” Sweet Pea comments, with a happy smile. 

“We found a river too.” Toni announces. “We can get the water and boil it here.”

Archie nods and says, “The sun is still far from setting and it’s close by. I think we can all go there before night falls.”

“Do you think it’s safe to do that?” Sweet Pea asks, grabbing a screwdriver and cleaning with a piece of cloth.

“Maybe not everyone all at once, we can’t leave the house unprotected either.” Archie ponders, “We better do it in little groups, in less than an hour each group can go and come back. What do you think?”

“I think it's a good plan.” Sweet Pea says, looking at the others three in the room, who all nod their agreement. “Okay, then let’s go.”

So they quickly set up their groups. The first one to go is Toni, JB and Veronica.

Jason insists on going with Archie and Kevin next. Cheryl sighs, he’s reaching an age where he’s getting embarrassed by things he didn’t before, like a _girl_ seeing him naked, even if it’s his sister, especially if it’s his sister according to him. So after them, she goes with only Betty.

The lack of privacy is something they had to get used to. But now when they haven’t bathed in days, when she knows even this is a luxury to have, she can’t bring herself to care.

While they're at it, they take the opportunity to wash their clothes as well. Luckily they found lots of soap bars in the pantry of the house. They also use everything they could find in there - buckets, bottles, pans,- to transport water, so they can have it in the house. Finally after everyone has gone and come back, Cheryl feels a thousand times better. What a clean body can’t do, right.

She’s now on the porch as she watches Jughead and Sweet Pea putting up an improvised clothesline in front of the house.

She takes her bottle of water on the handrail, deciding to enter the house to look for Jason, she doesn’t really have to look that far, right after she passes the door, she feels something collides with her. And oh, right into her hand that’s holding the bottle, spilling water in the front of her shirt.

“Shit, sorry!” The voice makes her look up.

Cheryl sees Jason, wide eyes, looking guilty, grabbing a football on the floor, probably what collided with her. She glares at him, which makes him curl on himself, looking even smaller.

“Okay, first, language.” Cheryl warns, and Jason immediately slaps his hand over his mouth as if realizing what he had said.

He lets out a muffled “Sorry.”

Which almost makes Cheryl smile, it’s rather cute. But she stays firm basically because she can already feel her shirt clinging coldly to her skin and water slipping into her pants.

“Second, where did you find this?” She recognizes the damn ball, Fangs was playing with it the first night she was on watch with Toni.

“Fangs gave it to me.” Jason answers.

“Hm,” Cheryl groans under her breath, she walks to the counter, placing the bottle on it and tries the keep the shirt away from the skin of her abdomen, “If you want to play, do it outside. Don’t throw it inside the house okay? You could’ve broken something.”

“Okay,” he replies quickly walking towards to door.

“Stay close to the others,” Cheryl calls after him, a little louder since he’s already on the porch, “Don’t wander off!”

Cheryl starts walking in the direction of the rooms, groaning to herself, at least it’s just water and luckily she still has another clean and dry shirt in her bag.

To try to stop the water from slipping even further into her jeans, she takes her shirt off as soon as she turns the corner to the hallway of the rooms, everyone except Betty and Kevin are outside anyway, and she tries to dry herself with it using the back part of the shirt.

Well, it turns out she was wrong about who is in the house at the moment as she feels her body clash with another walking out of a room.

“Ah,” Cheryl whimpers in pain, bringing her hand over her forehead, a little sore from the impact of their heads. “Again?” she whines under her breath.

“Oh, fuck... Sorry,” Toni’s voice reaches her ears.

Cheryl looks up to see the woman with wide eyes as she moves her eyes from Cheryl’s chest, only wrapped in a red bra, back to Cheryl’s face.

Remember the talk about lack of privacy? Normally she really doesn’t mind anymore, but something about Toni’s gaze has her squirming and she feels her cheeks flushing red. She doesn’t bother to cover up though.

“I... uhm…” Toni stutters. She shifts her focus to look at Cheryl’s forehead instead. “Shit, did you get hurt?”

"No," Cheryl says, swallowing. “I'm fine.”

“Oh... okay,” Toni clears her throat. She looks like she’s resisting the urge drop her gaze again, Cheryl raises an eyebrow at her which makes Toni averts her eyes and clear her throat one more time, “I’ll… I'll be going then.”

And then Toni bypasses her, almost running, and leaves the corridor behind Cheryl as she remains standing there, trying to process what just happened.

Did Toni really look at her like that or she was hallucinating it all?

She thinks the heat that’s still spreading through her body is answer enough, and it’s definitely not because of the second unwanted shower Jason just gave her.

Cheryl swallows hard, her brain quickly conjuring up some really rather vivid and inappropriate images. Cheryl stores these images on a little mental box and puts that box in another box, and then smashes the box with a large hammer until there’s nothing but smashed shards as she walks quick steps to her room, where she finds Betty lying on the bed.

Cheryl goes to her backpack on the floor and takes a red shirt from inside, slipping it over her head.

When she turns around she sees Betty sitting on the bed, facing her and smirking.

“What?” Cheryl asks, frowning.

“Nothing,” she replies, holding a chuckle. 

Oh, shit, she saw it. Betty must have eyes everywhere, Jesus! 

“Look, I don't know what you saw, but-” Cheryl says, feeling her cheeks burn again. But Betty interrupts her.

“Oh, I didn't see anything.” She says, pretending to examine her nails. “What, there was something to see?”

Cheryl sighs, she’s ready to reply when a sudden scream in the distance makes her blood run cold.

“Monsters!” Jason's voice comes from outside the house.

Her heart squeezes so hard that she’s frozen in place for a moment. And then an adrenaline rush runs through her body and she doesn't think twice before running through the front door with Betty right behind her. And then Cheryl hears the all too well known growls in the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean... Do we love or do we love cliffhangers?


	7. i miss ice cream

_"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”_   
_-Oscar Wilde_

“You alright?” Jughead's voice makes Toni look up, watching him walk up to her on the front porch. She blinks and wordlessly nods her head, “Are you sure? You look a little flustered.”

“Just need some fresh air.” Toni replies shortly, massaging her temples.

Toni’s head is pounding. The image of Cheryl shirtless, wearing only that heavenly bra, the smooth skin of her cleavage Toni had to catch herself not to stare pops into her mind again.

Actually, scratch that, it never left.

“Okay, seriously, what happened?” Jughead asks as he puts one foot on the first step and rests his arms on the railing, frowning up at Toni.

“Nothing, Jug. I’m fine.” She growls.

“Alright. Sorry I asked.” Jughead raises his palms up. 

She ignores him, moving her eyes pass him to the side of the house, watching Jason and Archie playing in the yard, throwing a ball back and forth to each other. But Jughead apparently can’t take a hint.

“Come on, tell me. How is it going with Cheryl?”

Toni glares at him. Is it possible that she’s that transparent or he just knows her too well? She can't explain how Jughead knows what she’s thinking. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Jughead laughs. Since Cheryl gave her those meds for JB, he’s being a little more open to the other group, even voting in their favor when they were discussing staying together that morning.

“Fangs said you two looked _cozy_ the other night.” He says with a smirk, emphasizing and making quotation marks with his fingers when he says cozy.

She rolls her eyes, “I’d hardly say cozy. We were just talking.” A beat. “Barely.”

“Seriously, you should be more friendly.”

She scoffs, “Please, I _am_ in my best behavior.”

Jughead barely has time to reply, as her body freezes when she spotters the four reeling beings, coming out of the forest, already disentangling themselves from the dry branches that are clinging to the skin on their legs.

But the real problem is that all of them already have their arms outstretched and their jaws beating towards Jason, who is closer to the forest, his back to it and oblivious to the walkers, crouching on the soft grass to retrieve the ball.

“JASON!” She hears Archie yelling, beating her to it.

The little boy looks up at that, startled. Jason looks back and stumbles backwards when he sees the four walkers growling in his direction. He tries to crawl backwards in an unsuccessful attempt to escape the creatures.

“Shit,” Toni whispers, making her around the porch.

“Monsters!” Jason screams, and she can hear the sob in his voice while he tries to crawl away from them.

Toni jumps up the porch steps and runs up to his direction, though Archie who was closer and already running to him, gets to Jason first. He grabs Jason’s with one arm and pressing him against his body as he lifts him up.

But that leaves him exposed to the first walker, she can see the creature snarl near Archie's right ear and she gives one last impulse to her running and punches the side of its head.

The walker stumbles backwards a little giving them time to get a bit of distance between them.“Fuck,” she grunts shaking her hand, trying to relieve the pain without much success.

Jughead had also run there and is trying to draw the other walkers attention to the other side. The first walker is on her left again and she desperately kicks its thigh, causing its fragile femur to split in half and it falls awkwardly to the floor.

She feels a pair of strong, skeletal hands grab her leg and she stumbles falling to the ground.

“Damn it,” she growls, trying to get rid of the hands and bite attempts that the walker is trying on her leg. Again Toni manages to hit it in the head and it staggers a little.

It’s all happening too fast.

She can’t think straight right now, watching another walking her direction behind the one trying again to get her foot, and she’s still on the floor. God, why doesn’t she have a weapon with her?

She finally manages get a little distance from the walker, “Toni!” Sweet Pea’s scream makes her look back. He’s running towards her, Cheryl and Betty behind him, making their way down the stairs of the porch.

Sweet Pea has a machete in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. He makes a motion to throw her the machete. And before she can even think of the horrible ways this could end, he does throw it her way.

She widen her eyes as the weapon lands beside her, right next to her arm, but without overthinking it she grabs it and quickly force the machete into the brain of the walker at her feet.

She startles when the other walker falls to her side, and she jumps back to get distance from it, but before she could drive the weapon into its head, she notices the creature is already dead, with an arrow coming out from the back of its skull.

Two down. Two to go.

She watches Sweet Pea and Archie, who had put Jason on the ground next to the house and came back, going to the other two walkers cornering an unarmed Jughead.

Archie grabs one by the shoulders and forcefully throws it backwards to the floor; he then slams his boot repeatedly into its head, until it doesn’t move anymore.

While Sweet Pea yanks the knife sharply into the other walker, killing it.

Toni stands up searching for any other threat, but it looks like it was just those walkers around.

“Jason,” Cheryl calls her brother. Toni looks back to see Cheryl hugging him, looking frantically for any injuries and then hugging him again.

Jason’s tightening his arms around his sister's neck, as Cheryl closed her eyes and pressed him even closer to her body. Toni can’t take her eyes away from the view, she doesn’t know why and she’s definitely not ready to analyze _why_.

Toni takes a deep breath, trying to calm her heart, the adrenaline still in her bloodstream.

In the background, she hears Sweet Pea announcing they don’t have more company. 

And then Cheryl opens her eyes and their eyes meet from across the yard.

Toni doesn't know what to do or what to say. She wants to help, wants to say something that would make her and her brother feel safer, but nothing forms in her mind. Cheryl probably wouldn’t even hear Toni at this distance.

Cheryl whispers something inaudibly to Jason and lifts him in her arms, getting up from her kneeling position. Cheryl then gives Toni a small smile, one Toni can barely see because of her brother's arms near her mouth. But her eyes manage to express gratitude.

Toni smiles back, still a little stunned by everything. The walkers’ attack, Cheryl’s fucking smile…

They’re still staring at each other, but then Cheryl moves away to try to calm Jason down inside the house.

“Are you okay?” Sweet Pea walks over to her, a worried expression on his face.

"Yes," She says, nodding.

“Our coming and going from the river must’ve brought them here,” Sweet Pea sighs.

When they walk inside the house, she feels a little calmer, but still feeling that tense atmosphere among everyone, the fear that more walkers would appear.

Archie gives the idea of putting something on the trees to make noise to announce if the walkers come back. So they take the barbed wire and some rolls of string they found, and tie them to the nearby trees. On the wire they put some empty food cans and other metals that will make noise if something got tangled in it.

They spend the rest of the afternoon taking care of that and when night falls, everyone is already gathered in the living room.

Their faces, this time, are more rested, better, maybe because of the bath and the water they now have a lot. They're over to the fire pit they have going, it’s small and barely lit, they can’t risk the fire being bright enough to have walkers stumbling upon them again. Fangs is the one responsible for preparing the dinner, a simple mushroom soup and meat that they managed from the hunt, as the rest talk quietly with each other.

“So...” JB speaks a little louder to get everyone's attention. “What were you doing before the world became this hell?”

Toni sighs.

She’s impressed, it even took too long for JB to try and make conversation with the other group. She’s curious by nature, too curious for her on good.

“You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want,” Jughead’s quick to reply, throwing a glare at JB’s way who just shrugs.

“It’s okay,” Betty flashes her a little smile and JB flicks her tongue out to her brother and glances back at Betty. “Well, I worked at the local newspaper in our town. My mom was the owner.”

“Our town?” Fangs asks, surprised, “You all came from the same place?”

“Yeah,” Betty says, shrugging.

“It’s a small town, everybody knows each other since… forever basically.” Kevin offers as well.

“I don’t think I could’ve survived in a small town.” Veronica says, surprising Toni, of everyone she’s the only who seemed more reluctant about the other group, “Before everything, I mean.”

“What did you do, before?” Betty asks her, tilting her head.

“I had an internship at a fashion company.” Veronica replies with a little smile on her face, like she’s remembering that time, the _good times_.

“God,” Kevin gasps, “Must be hell not wearing what you want now.”

“It’s the worst.” Veronica says with a suffered sigh and then laughs.

“Yeah, of course.” Fangs says, in mock seriousness, “Not the walkers trying to kill us, the hunger or the lack of electricity. But not being able to stride around in a killing outfit.”

“Absolutely,” Kevin agrees with a laugh.

“Okay, enough with your white collar lives. If there’s anything I miss it’s definitely not clothes,” Sweet Pea says, “Okay, if you could have something from before the end of the world. What would it be?”

“Fast food.” Kevin replies immediately.

“Music.” Toni says thoughtfully, “Something to listen to it.”

“Yes,” Fangs nods. “Oh, my Xbox.”

“A hot tub.” Cheryl says quietly. And Toni has to fight every cell of her body not to picture Cheryl in a fucking hot tub.

“I said no rich stuff,” Sweet Pea says jokingly, and Cheryl grins at him, “A coffee maker.”

“I miss TV.” JB says.

“Electric razor,” Jughead rubs his chin. “Much easier.”

“Like you need to shave,” Veronica rolls her eyes.

“Hey! I shave. Regularly!”

“Regularly, yeah, sure,” Toni says snarkily. “Your regular yearly shave.”

“Heaters,” Archie suggests, joining them. “Heaters for winter, fans for summer.”

“Practical,” Cheryl says considering it, “But oh, a hair dryer though, I’d like a hair dryer.”

“I miss ice cream.” Jason suddenly says.

“Me too.” Fangs sighs dreamily, earning a childish giggle from Jason.

The comment and the high pitched giggle make everyone laugh a little. She watches as Cheryl runs her hand through Jason hair, stifling a grin. Toni can’t help thinking that this little bond JB was trying to create is really dangerous. They can’t do that, in a few days they’ll split up and each group will go their own way.

They’ll go to the CDC and Cheryl’s group will go to wherever it is they want to go, as long as it's far away from them.

“Dinner is ready!” Fangs announces, taking her out of her thoughts.

That night Toni takes the first watch again along with Sweet Pea, only going to sleep when Archie shows up to cover her in the middle of the night.

When she wakes up, she finds Sweet Pea already gone, not that it surprises her.

 _Morning people_. She mentally scoffs and sits on the edge of the bed, stretching her arms before making her way out of the room.

Tying her hair in a loose bun she walks towards the kitchen to find Veronica sitting on the sink and eating fruit from a bowl.

“Morning!” Veronica says teasingly, “About time.”

Toni just hums, “What time is it?”

“Already noon, sleepyhead.”

“Shit, seriously?” Toni gapes at her, she slept a whole lot more than she’s used to, no wonder she feels so refreshed. “Where is everybody?” She walks to Veronica to steal some of the fruit from the bowl.

“Some of them are in the garage.”

“I thought it was locked.” The property has a detached garage beside the house, Sweet Pea said it was locked when they first cleared the house, he looked into it through the windows to make sure it was empty, but didn’t try to get in.

“They broke in a while ago.” Veronica replies. She slips from the sink to the floor, placing the now empty bowl inside of it. “I’m gonna look for Fangs, I told him I would go with him into the forest today.”

“Okay, thanks.”

She walks out of the house, feeling the sun on her skin and takes a deep breath of fresh air and moves towards the garage. Where there’s a now open door beside the big one used for vehicles.

The garage itself isn’t that big, and there’s a lot of shit here, taking up a lot space. There’re shelves full of cardboard boxes against the walls, where Cheryl, Archie and Sweet Pea are looking through it right now.

Cheryl has her back to Toni, she looks relaxed as she goes through the stuff inside a box. She’s wearing the same she did yesterday, a thick red plaid shirt and tight jeans that marked her long legs perfectly. In her back there’s the bow and quiver, always within reach. The redhead looks effortless beautiful.

“Good morning,” Archie’s voice makes her drags her eyes away from Cheryl.

Archie’s looking at her curiously, but before he says anything Toni quickly averts his eyes. “Morning, you guys are looking for something?”

“Anything useful. We wanted to go on a search tomorrow, so a map would be great.” Sweet Pea replies and Toni just hums in acknowledgement.

She starts to look around the garage, through the crowded shelves. Why there’re so many boxes?

She knees down beside the closets box and rips it open to see what’s inside. A lot of towels, not exactly very useful for them right now but she isn't going to turn her nose up at it.

Moving just slightly she begins to look around the second box, that holds an assortment of stuff, cooking implements, pots, pans, and cutlery. "Look at this, a portable cooking stove, even has a full canister of gas unused," Toni says, "That will be easier than using a fire if we’re not in a house or the house doesn’t have gas on the stove." 

“Nice, just put the stuff you want on that box next to the door.” Sweet Pea replies.

After doing that she continues her search, walking next to Cheryl loading stuff off another box. When Toni moves next to her, Cheryl nods at her in greeting.

“Found something interesting?” Toni asks.

“Well, if you count this interesting,” she says, taking what’s look like a wooden pistol case from the top shelf. Cheryl opens it, and yes, it is. Inside of the case there’s a gun and an extra magazine.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, we also found a lot of ammo in another box.” Cheryl looks at her curiously and questions, “Will someone on your group want it?”

Toni waves her hand dismissively, “No, it’s fine. Everyone has one, you can keep it. You gave yours to Betty, right?” She opens another cardboard box on the shelf, going through it, just some toys, probably belonged to the kids she saw on the pictures in the house. “We can share the ammo though.” Toni adds giving her a smile.

“Alright,” Cheryl replies quietly, retuning the smile.

“Yes!” Someone exclaims behind them and they turn around to see Archie waving something in his hand.

“What?”

“Found a map.” He moves to a small table unloading the stuff on it to the floor and stretches the map on the table, leaning over to stare at it, Sweet pea coming up beside him to do the same.

“Okay,” Toni murmurs.

She then notices something covered with a tarpaulin at the end of the room, right behind Cheryl.

Toni moves past her to examine it, she removes the blue tarpaulin to uncover a motorcycle.

“Wow,” Toni sighs.

It looks new, just a little dust accumulated, but no scratch is visible.

The motorcycle is black with silver details on the bodywork. She inspects it from the handle to the body, running her fingers on the name of the model written in silver ink, _Mirage 250_.

“Oh, do you like motorcycles?” Cheryl asks teasingly, shaking her head at Toni basically drooling over the bike.

Sweet Pea laughs at that, “Toni? Maybe just a tiny obsession is the right word.”

“Shut up,” Toni glares at him, she turns to Cheryl, “Does any of you ride it?”

Cheryl looks at her like she’s crazy and shakes her head, “No.” Toni looks at Archie then, who has his back to her, but Cheryl quickly replies with a laugh, “Archie? He doesn’t either.”

“What? The death trap? No, thank you.” Archie says without looking away from the map over the table.

“I must agree with him on that,” Cheryl says, twisting her mouth in distaste at the bike. “It’s all yours.”

“Merry Christmas to me then.” Toni murmurs quietly, turning to her new motorcycle, running her hand over the seat to clean the dust on it, “Hello, baby.”

Cheryl snorts behind her. Toni inspects the bike once more and notices the keys on the ignition, she slides her right leg over the seat to sit on it.

Turning the key, the cluster lights up. “I think it’s working fine, it’s just out of gas.”

Toni takes the keys from the ignition after some further investigating and stands, sliding out of the motorcycle. She’s puzzled when she finds Cheryl’s gaze snapping back to her face.

“If we're going in a search tomorrow, we can take gas for the bike as well,” Toni says, frowning. Cheryl’s eyes couldn’t have been glued to her ass just now. At least not on _purpose_ , right?!

“Sure.” Cheryl replies, turning around to focus on the boxes again, leaving Toni staring at the back of her head.

“Hey, girls.” Sweet Pea calls.

“What is it?” Toni asks, glad to focus on anything else that’s not wondering if Cheryl was checking her out or not.

Archie pulls the table from against the wall to the middle of the garage and motions for them to stand on the other side of it to look at the map as well.

“Okay, it’s not much, but you can get an idea of where we are.”

“Here.” Sweet Pea points out, placing his finger on the map. “It's the river. And here,” He continues, sliding his finger across the paper. “It’s this house. Like I said, we should go on a search for supplies if we’re planning on staying here. We just need to figure out where to go.”

“Basically there’s two places we can go that’s not just forest and it’s close enough.” Archie says.

Toni examines the map, “We can go back.”

“Yes, or we can go north.” Archie points at a large square space on the map. “I think there’s a condo here.”

“It’s too risky to go back the same way we came from.” Cheryl says softly, glancing up at them and back to the map. “The herd may have followed us this direction.”

“It doesn't have to be the same way.” Sweet Pea replies, shrugging his shoulders. She places his finger on a point on the map. “See these? This is the highway we came from, right?” At their nod, Sweet Pea quickly continues. “Look at these adjacent,” Toni leans over and sees three more highways heading east. “There must be a neighborhood around here, and away from the city.”

“The roads might be blocked with cars.” Cheryl comments, “Many people must’ve fled from the city at the same time.”

“But the road to the condo might be too.” Toni murmurs, glancing sideways at Cheryl.

“Yeah, we’ll only know if we go there.” Cheryl says, shrugging.

Toni hums in answer, still thinking. “There’s the problem of the gas as well, we only have half a tank in my car.”

“Mine has definitely more than half.” Sweet Pea says.

They stay silent for a few seconds, pondering everything. Both places have their own risks and nothing is guaranteed. Cheryl’s right, they’ll only know if they go to one way or the other.

“So where do we go?” Toni finally asks.

Archie answers “To the condo,” at the same time Sweet Pea says, “Back into town.”

Toni glances up, looking between the two men. She shares a look with Cheryl beside her, probably thinking the same. _Awkward_.

She thought this would happen much earlier than it did, honestly. How they’re crashing.

Toni remembers over a year ago when they started to travel, in the beginning of the apocalypse, decisions had to be made and they never elected a leader per say, but Sweet Pea kind of took that responsibility to himself and no one questioned. He’s a good leader, Toni trusts him to make the best decision for everyone. And it’s clear that Archie did the same in their group.

“How about we split?” Cheryl suggests, trying to break the tension they can feel in the air. “Two groups, one goes to the city and the other to the condo.”

“We could do that, two cars…” Toni trails off.

Sweet Pea sighs, “I don’t know, guys. I don’t like spreading out like that. And we’d have few people here on the house.”

“Not really,” Cheryl points out, “Three people in each search is enough and the rest stay here.”

“That’s fine by me.” Archie says, shrugging.

Sweet Pea closes his eyes, nodding his head slowly as if trying to convince himself, “Okay then.”

“So who is going where?” Cheryl asks.

“You can go with me to the condo.” Archie replies and Cheryl just nods.

Toni inspects the maps once more and says, “As far as I can see the road leading there is the shortest. I’ll go with you in my car since we can't waste that much gas.”

“Half a tank is enough to go there.” Archie says, nodding.

“Okay, that decided.” Sweet Pea murmurs running his hand through his hair, messing it up even more than already was. “And the other?”

“Betty will want to go as well, I’m sure.” Cheryl offers.

“Okay, she can go with me and I’ll talk to Fangs too-”

“I can go.” Jughead’s voice coming from the door startles everyone.

“Jug!” Toni exclaims. “Shit, warn a girl.”

“Sorry,” Jughead says smiling sheepishly.

“You sure you want to go?” Sweet Peas asks, narrowing his eyes.

“Yes, I’m just feeling useless trapped in the house.”

“Alright then,” Sweet Pea looks at them, “Team A me, Jug and Betty, team B you three. The rest will stay here with the kids.”

They all nod their agreement. “I think we’re the team A, though.” Toni replies teasingly.

Sweet Pea just shakes his head at her, a tiny smile on his face, and starts to walk out of the garage.

“So we’re going tomorrow?” Jughead asks. 

"Yes," Sweet Pea replies, pushing past Jughead. “We leave early tomorrow.” Then he’s gone.

Toni sighs as she watches Archie folding the map again and Cheryl going back to look through the boxes behind them. They just need to find some food and supplies and then they’d have a few moments of peace. Hopefully nothing would go terribly bad…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost added vibrators to the things they missed, I had to constantly remind myself that there were children present.


	8. i can take care of myself

_"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”_   
_-Mary Oliver_

“Give me your arm.”

Kevin sits on the bed and stretched out his left arm, placing it on her thigh and Cheryl studies the stitches that this time seemed to have endured.

The skin around the sutures is less red, a little less sensitive, which allowed her to run her fingertips over it without Kevin sighing in pain. His skin is still pale though, but maybe that’s just because of the lack of food in his stomach.

“How are you feeling?” Cheryl asks.

“Tired.” Kevin replies. “What did you do today? I slept all day, didn't I?”

“Yeah. It’s already night and everyone is in the living room.” She informs him with an apologetic smile. “I stayed here, but we found a fishing gear in the garage and some of us went to the river.”

“Hm” He mutters as Cheryl cleans the cut on his arm and wraps a new piece of cloth around it.

“You hungry? I think they’re almost ready with the food.” Cheryl says, putting everything back into the aid kit. “For today's menu we have roasted squirrel and some fish that they caught today.”

“Sounds delicious.” Kevin grimaces and pumps a fist in a clearly sarcastic cheer. “But seriously though, I could eat a rock right now.”

“Want help getting up?” Cheryl asks and he nods, holding her hand to stand up. She helps Kevin to the living room and sit him on the couch.

That afternoon, as she stayed at the house, they decided to clean it up a bit as much as they could. They moved some chairs and benches from the garage to the living room, organizing it so everyone could have a seat, instead of sitting on the floor.

Toni and Archie are putting more wood in the fireplace. He broke the logs as she places them in a way that the flames wouldn’t get too high.

She sits on a chair closest to the window, watching the night outside. Cheryl tries not to think about it, but staying here is comfortable and so far safe, except for yesterday’s incident but still safer than they were before, far away from the danger of a big city.

“Do you think it’ll snow?” Toni’s voice removes her from her thoughts as she sits beside her.

“I don’t think this part of the country snows.”

“In this crazy world.” She comments, a crooked smile on her face. “I don't doubt it could happen.”

“Who knows.” Cheryl trails off and before Toni could say anything else Jason comes running and plops himself over her.

“Look,” He holds his hand up showing her a book, a copy of _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe._

“Are you going to read it?” Cheryl asks to which he nods enthusiastically.

“I used to love this book.” Toni interjects and Jason turns is big brown eyes to her.

“Me too.” Cheryl adds quietly.

“What’s it about?”

Toni leans forward on the chair like she’s telling him a secret, resting her elbows on her knees, which also makes Jason leans forward eager to listen, “It’s about this fantastic world that we really can’t talk about,” she whispers conspiratorially.

“Why not?” He loudly whispers.

“Because it’s also a secret world, you’ll have to read to find out.”

Jason hums and eyes the book with growing interest. He then wordless goes to sit by the fire.

“Didn’t know kids that little could read.” Toni says, staring after Jason silently turning over the first page of the book.

Cheryl looks at her curiously, holding a laugh. “He’s almost nine, of course he can read.”

“Yeah, I don’t know shit about kids. I have no idea what’s the age appropriate for these things, like, when do they start walking or talking? Like diapers, does he need it?”

Cheryl lets out a breathy laugh, “No, absolutely not.” Toni smirks at her like she only said that to make her laugh, and Cheryl promptly decides to ignore the spike of… something she feels. “Well, I wouldn’t know much about children either if I didn’t live with one.”

“Makes sense.” They make eye contact for a brief moment before Sweet Pea is calling them, announcing dinner is ready, already putting food in a plate for everyone.

That night is a little different than the others, basically because Fangs don't shut up for a minute. He keeps telling funny things that happened to him before the Apocalypse. The conversation brings laughter to everyone there, even Cheryl who is trying to keep a straight face.

She looks around and sees Betty, Archie and especially Kevin laughing with him, and Cheryl can’t help feeling warm inside by the view.

“It must be past midnight.” Fangs says after one of his stories.

“It is.” Archie replies, looking at the watch on his wrist.

“Then it's Christmas.” Sweet Pea celebrates, lifting a glass of water.

“Yeah!” Kevin, Fangs and JB cheer at the same time, also raising their glasses. “Merry Christmas!”

Even reluctantly, she sees Toni lift her glass of water as well and look at her. Cheryl rolls her eyes but smiles at the same time, deciding to do the same.

The next day she finds herself getting ready to go on their search on the condo. After saying goodbye to Jason, who barely looked up or acknowledge her, engrossed in his book, she steps into the kitchen to eat something before the trip.

“Cheryl?”

She turns around and sees Toni staring at her from the front door, wearing her inseparable black jacket. She also has a new black machete sheath wrapped around her thigh.

“Let’s go?” she calls. “We’re just waiting for you.”

“Yes, of course.”

She slides her bow and quiver over her shoulder and head, takes her backpack and follows Toni outside.

There’s only one car parked in front of the house now, Sweet Pea had already left with Betty and Jughead on their search a few minutes ago.

Cheryl walks over to Toni's car, where Archie’s finishing putting some things in the trunk, with Fangs helping him.

“Alright, all set!” Fangs says when Cheryl and Toni approach. “Drive safe.”

“We will, mom.” Toni replies, getting into the driver’s seat.

Archie wastes no time and steps into the back seat on the other side. Cheryl finds herself with the only option of going on the passenger seat. She sits down, leaving her backpack on her feet and buckles up.

Toni does the same and starts the car, moving slowly away as Fangs watches them from the sidewalk.

Driving through the empty highway, all she can see is abandoned cars with dried blood splashed on them as well as on the wall, one or two random bodies looking like fleshy vultures wandering here or there, the smell of rot and death dancing in the air. 

The zombies hovering close to the highway and dark trees nearby, when hearing the car, they start to move slowly towards them. Toni just increases the speed when they get close.

They drive for close to 30 minutes before they spot the street that will them take to the condo. Cheryl swallows hard, the closer they get there she sees that the large street isn’t that empty.

It looks like a graveyard of abandoned cars blocking the street.

“Shit,” Toni grunts under her breath.

Toni’s able to bypass some of them but finally she has to stop when they couldn’t move past in between the car anymore and the sidewalk is too small and has a lot of small trees to try and move through there. From this distance, Cheryl can see the large navy blue entrance gate; it’s not that far from where they stopped.

She looks over her shoulder to Archie who is in the middle of the back seat narrowing his eyes at the same gate.

“What now?” Toni sighs.

“We can still go there,” Cheryl replies, “It doesn’t look like a long walk.”

Toni hums, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, before getting out of the car, followed close behind by Archie.

“You two should go.” is the first thing Cheryl hears as she steps out of the car as well.

“What?”

“I’ll stay here, rummage around in the cars and siphon off more gas,” Archie says, looking around the empty, except for the cars, street.

Toni gives him a look, “Are you sure you want to be here alone?”

“Yeah, there’s no one around and we need the gas.” He replies extending his hand and Toni throws him the car keys, “And if any zombie shows up, I can manage.”

He opens the trunk, grabbing three red gas canisters and putting it on the ground. He takes his gym bag as well and hands it to Toni.

“We can't check everything today.” Cheryl states.

“No. Search the first houses, don’t go too far into the condo.” Archie begins, looking between the two of them, “Get only the essentials, remember you’ll have to carry it all the way back to here.” He checks the watch on his wrist, “After I finish up here I’ll go there looking for you and help, alright?”

Cheryl and Toni both reluctantly nod and start to walk around the cars, in the gate’s direction.

Cheryl looks at the watch she’s wearing, one she found in the house and decided to keep it, seeing it’s ten thirty in the morning. In the distance some clouds show up, but she doesn’t think it’s enough to rain today. That’s good.

The air is quiet as they walk. The silence only broken by their boots on the hard pavement.

It doesn't take more than ten minutes for them to arrive in front of the large gate. On either side of it, there’s a pole with broken lamps and shattered glass on the floor.

Toni reaches for the chain closing the gate when they notice a broken padlock on the floor.

“Please tell me this isn’t suicide.” Toni says, opening the gate just enough for them to walk through.

“We don't know yet.”

The condo looks like it was once a good place to live. The houses are large and colonial, all standardized. Most contain huge garages that probably once held expensive cars that live up to the residents' social class.

The streets are wide as well, the houses yard have green lawns, with arches and bushes that are no longer pruned. She can see only three cars around, they’re parked near the sidewalks or abandoned in the middle of the street, probably left in a hurry. In the distance Cheryl can see some zombies wandering, not yet noticing their presence. The smell of the place is a mixture of burnt rubber, mold and grass. 

Toni nudges her and points to the first house, already making her way there.

Cheryl picks up her bow and places an arrow ready to fire if necessary. She walks through the yard of the first house and the three steps to the porch.

Toni looks at her waiting for a sign, prepared to open the door.

Cheryl nods and Toni turns the handle, opening the door and giving her space to get in. She walks into the house with her bow raised, looking anywhere for zombies.

Toni steps to her side, the machete ready to attack. A single typical growl echoes from the living room and Toni walks slowly towards there. Cheryl goes the other way towards the kitchen.

The floor of the house is made of hardwood, the furniture is well designed and the colors of the walls are of flower patterns. She walks into the kitchen, in the middle of it is a rotting corpse, completely decomposing, giving slow steps through the kitchen.

A second after the zombie finally notices her, she fires an arrow to its head before it even step forward, making it fall to the ground.

“The walker is gone.” Toni's voice comes from the other door, probably leading to the living room. “What was it- oh shit.” she grumbles, bringing her hand over her mouth trying to block the smell.

“It came here.”

With a disgusted grimace, Cheryl steps carefully over the corpse, taking her arrow back.

“I'll check on the second floor.” Toni informs her and again disappears through the door and Cheryl hears her steps going up the stairs.

She starts to open the cupboards and collect some cans of soy and corn in the back, throwing them in her backpack and keeps searching all the doors there, ignoring the rotten smell surrounding the place.

In the end Cheryl manages to find cans of corn, canned beans and some bags of cookies and in the fridge she finds a bottle of water. Apparently people had taken a lot when they ran away or someone else took it, like them, looking for food.

Cheryl goes to the front door right when Toni comes down the stair.

“I found some pain killers in the bathroom and toothpaste. Nobody deserves morning breaths, right?” She smiles.

Cheryl snorts and rolls her eyes, walking out of the house and heading for another one.

They do the same thing and go inside, finding the house empty this time. This one looked in perfect condition and in the kitchen there’s a lot of food. While Toni this time collected the food in the kitchen, she goes up the stairs to the second floor, trying to make as little noise as possible. Going through the rooms, taking anything necessary. She walks to another door, when she doesn’t hear anything inside, she assumes it’s empty as well.

Her mistake.

The moment a crack is opened, the door is pulled and a loud growl echoes.Cheryl forcefully pushes the door closed again. Trying to control her now frenetic heart, she hears more grunts and bangs from behind the door, it looks like there’s more than one there.

“You okay?” Toni’s voice comes from down the stairs.

Taking a deep breath she answers, “Yeah. I’m fine.”

She shakes her head and keeps walking, deciding it’s not worth it, especially if there’s more than one zombie inside. Cheryl rummages around another room and the bathroom before going down the stairs again.

She finds Toni in what looks like an office. She’s in front of a liquor cabinet, holding a bottle of wine.

“Seriously?” Cheryl exclaims, staring at her.

Toni turns around, “I don’t think I’ve ever even hold something that expensive before.”

Cheryl leans against the door jamb, “Only the essential remember?” she says, mostly because they haven’t broken eye contact yet.

“I’m not gonna take it,” Toni answers exasperatedly, “I was just putting it back.”

When Cheryl simply raises her eyebrow, Toni smiles stiffly. Makes a show of revealing the bottle in her hand, a smile plastered as tucks it into the cabinet again. They still haven’t broken eye contact. _What the hell?_

There’s a faint sound of the zombies locked in the room upstairs hitting the door again and _that_ draws Cheryl's attention. She clears her throat.

“If you think these are expensive,” Cheryl trails off, walking toward the cabinet. She fumbles around the inside wall and pushes a little, hearing a small click. She rotates the tray, revealing a secret stash of wine bottles. Hearing a gasp from Toni, she realizes how close they are, too close, Cheryl can literally feel Toni’s breath on her face. She takes a step back, putting some distancing between them, “My parents’ house had one of these.”

Toni smirks, “Yeaah, totally pegged you for the rich kind.” Cheryl scoffs, which brings a smile to Toni’s face. “Do you know a lot about wines?”

“Not really. My mother wouldn’t let me get anywhere near alcohol if she could help it.” Cheryl admits with a small laugh.

“Then how did you know about the secret stash here?”

Cheryl smirks lifting an eyebrow, “Well, sometimes she couldn’t help it.”

Toni laughs, “A bit of a rebel too, _that_ I didn’t expect.”

“Shut it,” Cheryl rolls her eyes, “It wasn’t fun when they found out though.”

“What did they do? Didn’t gave you the money of the month? Took away your really expensive car?” Toni says as she waves her hand excitedly in the air, “No wait, told you to get a job like us mortals?”

Cheryl lets out a half-hearted snort, “As if,” The smile fading of her face and she looks away, “My parents weren’t very good people.” She murmurs without thinking. Cheryl’s lips twitch, already regretting her honesty. She can almost _feel_ Toni’s eyes staring at her.

Cheryl turns away after closing the cabinet they’ve been in front of, “Let’s go, we can still search a few houses.” She walks out of the office then, straight to the front door and leaving the house.

She kicks herself for the display of vulnerability that she’s not unused to show. Especially to someone she’s known for a few days. Cheryl literally runs away before they enter any line of questioning. She’s clenching and unclenching her jaw, the tension in her body obvious as she walks across the street to the next house, not bothering checking if Toni is following her.

This whole interaction was a mistake so she’s just going to ignore it, it doesn’t _mean_ anything. It’s not like Toni cares either, it’s fine. She sighs reaching the front door and briefly looks back to see Toni stepping on the porch. They don’t care about each other, she keeps telling herself, they are _not_ friends. And it’s better this way, carrying about more people in this world only means you’re setting yourself up for constant worry and eventually heartbreak. No one is safe anymore. At any moment now, someone you care about could die and leave you to deal with consequences. And Cheryl already has a lot to worry about, she doesn’t need to add to it.

They search through two other houses without much trouble and in a total dead silence. She sometimes catches Toni staring at her, but quickly averting her eyes. Cheryl just ignores it and keeps looking around drawers and closets.

On the next house they enter, that changes. Cheryl’s on the second floor, she’s about to turn a corner she supposes it leads to the bedrooms when she hears it. A low growl coming from that corridor, she stops short but a little too late.

A strong zombie, looking more like a big closet, falls towards her, with its mouth wide open, looking like a bottomless pit. Its eyes wide and white. A deep bite is visible on its left collarbone. 

Its arms grab her by the shoulders and push her backwards. 

Cheryl’s back hits the railing and she groans in pain. She tries to push the zombie back, but her hands just remain flat on its chest, the zombie is too big and heavy for that. The sound of its teeth chattering making her even more desperate, missing her shoulder by inches but she’s able to keep its mouth away from her.

Her body is already starting to lean down on the railing, she quickly looks down, measuring her options.

She takes a deep breath and seeks strength from the skies and somewhat awkward, she kicks the zombie’s leg to destabilize it a little. It works, the zombie is hanging its body weight on other side. Not wasting time, she lets go of its chest, punching forcefully one of the arms pressing her shoulder with both of her hands. She slides to the side until she’s finally free from its hold. She inverts their positions, pushing the zombie against the rail.

Cheryl reaches behind her grabbing blindly an arrow and yanks it into the zombie’s head. The arrow breaking in half with the force as she pushes it even further into its brain.

She kicks its other knee just for good measure, hearing the noise of the joint breaking and Cheryl finishes pushing it off the rail.

Then she hears its body exploding on the ground of the first floor of the house. Cheryl takes several breaths to calm her heart and leans over to see the damage below.

Toni is staring at her with wide eyes, she sees that the zombie has fallen on the ground just inches from where she’s standing. 

“Another step and that walker would’ve fallen on me.” She looks up with a glare. “I was fucking coming up to help you.”

“Sorry.” Cheryl shrugs, “But I can take care of myself.” She says harsher than she intended.

Cheryl winces inwardly and leaves Toni staring at her from the floor below to search for supplies again.

She enters the master bedroom, going straight to the bathroom door. Opening a small cabinet, she sighs relieved to see more meds there. Some pain killers and penicillin as well.

Walking into the bedroom again, she notices movement on the street through the big window on the wall. She steps beside it and carefully peaks below. Letting out a relieved sigh when she sees it’s Archie walking slowly, hand placed over his gun and looking for any sign of them.

Cheryl quickly descends the stairs, jumping the dead body on the floor, and finds Toni in the kitchen loading some stuff in her backpack.

“Archie’s here.”

“Great. I don’t have to carry two bags now,” she says, zipping it closed and putting it on her back. “There wasn’t a lot a food here.”

They leave the house, finding Archie a few feet from there. He turns his head sharply and visibly relaxes seeing them. Getting close enough, Toni immediately throws him the gym bag. “Any trouble?”

“None.” Archie replies.

They go through other three houses that day and it takes them almost all afternoon, since in the last one they find five zombies holed up inside the kitchen. They had to close the door and let each one of the zombies get through it one by one to kill them.

After that they leave the condo, they could come back another day. This place is a gold mine and there’s so much more houses to look through, but it’s getting late and it’s always a bad idea to travel at night.

When they get to the car, she sees Archie had moved it so now the car is facing the other direction, he opens the trunk and they throw the bags there. The tank is full now and Archie was able to fill the three gas canisters they brought.

Settling in the car, they soon return to the main highway and it’s not long before they’re already going up the gravel road to the house. The sky already orange from the end of the day.

As they get close to the house, Cheryl sees Sweet Pea’s car already there, but something is wrong, the car isn’t even parked right, halfway over the grass of the yard and all doors are wide open.

She feels Toni perk up on her seat, “Something’s wrong.” Toni says, getting out of the car when she barely stopped it.

Cheryl and Archie don't waste time and start running towards the house as well.

“What happened?!” Toni stammers to the first person she sees inside the house. Cheryl gets through the door to see is Fangs. Veronica, Kevin, Jason and JB are just behind him on the living room.

“The others just get here,” Fangs murmurs, a little dejected and tired, rubbing his eyes. “It’s Sweets.”

“What do you mean? What happened to him?” Toni’s voice is strained and there’s a tremor in it Cheryl never heard before.

“Come here,” he says and starts walking to the bedrooms direction with the three of them following, “He... fell and hit his head very hard on the floor, I don’t know the specifics you’ll have to ask Jug or Betty. But he's unconscious and bleeding.”

Opening the door, Cheryl sees Jughead standing there and Betty sitting next to Sweet Pea on the bed, wiping the blood from the side of his head with a cloth, she looks up when they walk in.

“I think he has a concussion.” Betty whispers. “He's bleeding a lot.”

Toni steps slowly into the room, not taking her eyes away of Sweet Pea’s unconscious form, before looking at Jughead questionably.

“We stumbled on a few walkers, one went up to him, he lost his balance and hit his head hard, we managed to kill the walker right after.”

“He was fighting a walker then?” She swallows hard, “Did you check for any bites or scratches?”

Jughead gapes at her, eyes wide, “I, I don’t see any. I don’t think so-”

“You don’t think so?” Toni snarls louder, her voice cracking on the last word.

“Guys...” a tired voice makes them turn towards the bed, Betty stands up from the bed putting some distance between them, “He's moving.”

Cheryl sees Toni quickly grabbing her machete, but only drawing it a few inches out of the sheath as she takes slow steps towards the bed. Jughead presses himself on the wall, staring aghast at Sweet Pea.

Cheryl and Archie share a fearful look, he also has his hand over the hunting knife on the waistband of his jeans.

Sweet Pea's body is stretched out on the soft bed and he’s so pale he even looks dead. The blood line that came out of his head to his chin had been cleaned by Betty, but is still slightly red and his black hair damp with it.

His breathing is stronger now and his chest rise and falls with difficulty, like a whimper and wheezing.

“Come on, man. Open your eyes,” Toni whispers so quiet Cheryl is only able to hear because of the dead silent room.

Cheryl keeps her eyes on the bed and tries to ignore the tightness in her throat as she sees Toni holding the machete tightly with trembling fingers. She doubts Toni would have the courage to kill him even if she had to. And as if reading her thoughts, Fangs also takes slow steps to the other side of the bed standing in front of Betty.

Sweet Pea's fingers and lips begin to move. She studies his troubled expression, his face dripping from sweat. Everyone in the room holds their breaths until the last moment.

“I think you’ll need to wait a little longer to kill me.” Sweet Pea's voice comes out so weak that Cheryl can barely hear it.

Then she releases all the air trapped inside her lungs and in the background she can hear the rest doing the same. Toni lets go of the machete and uses the wall behind the bed to steady herself, visibly more relaxed.

“You gave us a big scare.” Toni comments giving him a smile.

“Are they... are they okay? Is everyone okay?” Sweet Pea whispers.

“Everyone is fine.” Fangs is the one who replies.

Sweet Pea opens his eyes slowly as he feels Toni's hand squeeze his shoulder.

“What happened?” He groans a little, trying to get up only to wince in pain, the sudden movement probably causing the headache to pulse viciously. “Whoa.”

“Oh, no no. Stay there.” Toni gently pushes his shoulders until he lies down again. Sweet Pea brings his hand to his head, flinching when he presses it on his temple.

“You're still not quite well. You were bleeding a lot, I think you’ll need stitches and we don't have ways to make tests, but you may have a concussion.” Betty speaks up, walking towards the bed. “We need pain killers, your headache will only get worse.”

“We found some,” Cheryl says, still worried just seeing how pale Sweet Pea looks, “Back in the condo.”

“I’ll get it.” Archie promptly says and walks out of the door.

Sweet Pea breathes out, “How was-” He cuts himself off before quickly bending his body to the side of the bed and throwing up on the floor. Not giving time for Toni to step back to not get vomit on her boots.

“Fuck,” Toni whispers shaking her foot and Cheryl winces in sympathy for the both of them.

“Yeah, he definitely has a concussion.” Betty says, “The best thing you can do is get full rest for at least two weeks.”

“Two weeks?!” Jughead exclaims, gaping.

“At least.” Betty points out.

“Sorry,” Sweet Pea murmurs to Toni, pointing at her shoes, already closing his eyes because of the fatigue.

“It’s fine.” Toni says, but Sweet Pea is already asleep.

“Come on now,” Fangs guides them out of the room. After that everyone is gathered again in the living room, this time with more relaxed expressions, almost bordering on relief. Archie is loading their bags on the kitchen, while Veronica looks for the pain killer on her backpack.

“We can wake him up to take it in a while,” Betty says to them on the kitchen, “He can’t sleep for longer than a few hours at a time anyway, due to the concussion.”

Cheryl sits herself down on the couch, finally resting a bit. She’s glad Sweet Pea is okay, at least as okay as having a concussion, but still alive. That’s what’s important. She watches as Toni takes out her boots with a disgusted look and puts it on the porch before lying on the other couch, a heavy sigh leaving her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queen of creating tension that something terrible is gonna happen only to everything turn out fine. Don't get used to it.


	9. hasn't been easy

_"No good deed goes unpunished.”_   
_-Oscar Wilde_

Two nearly three weeks have gone by, and they manage to create a routine, little by little. They have a bunch of individual and group tasks as they got more comfortable in the place.

At first it was all the same, for most of them they had an invisible barrier dividing their groups, but by now no one is bothered by that anymore, it has already become normal doing things together, be it taking care of the house or going in searches or to the forest and river. Always gathering by dinner when they either talk or stay in silence, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable one. It doesn't feel like they always have to be talking, good enough just being next to each other. So they are always all together at least for that meal, like an unspoken deal.

Now it’s almost noon and Toni is walking out of the house, into the front porch to witness whatever the fuck is going on in the yard right now.

“There’s absolutely no way you can do that!” She’s in time to hear Jughead say.

Outside Cheryl, Jughead, Archie, JB and Fangs are all hanging out in front of the house. Toni still doesn’t know what’s happening but it looks like Jug and Cheryl are fighting about something, while the others are trying to hold their laughs.

“Of course I can.” Cheryl protests.

Jughead shakes his head, “Hmhm impossible.”

“Oh, wanna bet?”

He narrows his eyes at her, then looks at the others with this look that says ‘Is this girl serious?’, and Archie who is shaking his head at Jughead, “Alright,” he nods, not minding him looking back at Cheryl, “What do you want?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Archie advises.

“Shh,” Cheryl replies, trying to hide her smile but failing miserably. She’s tilting her head, as if thinking hard then turns to Jughead again, “You take up cleaning duty?”

“Deal,” Jughead nods, Cheryl just gives this excited smile and shrug that Toni can’t help but think is really cute. “Hey, hold up, you haven’t won anything,” Toni sees more than hears Cheryl mouthing ‘yet’, and she has the hold a laugh. Jughead continues, holding up a tennis ball on his right hand, “So, if you can hit this _in the air_ with an arrow, I’ll take your cleaning duty tonight and if you can’t, you take my watch duty.”

So that’s what this is about? This boy is gonna lose so bad. He hadn’t see Cheryl using her bow up close yet and it shows. Toni props her elbows on the handrail to better see the show.

“I feel like I have to say it again, I wouldn’t do this.” Archie warns.

“Yeah yeah,” Jughead moves to stand beside Cheryl as she prepares the bow, placing an arrow ready. They’re facing the forest so if anything, no one gets hurt.

“Ready?”

“Just go on already,” Cheryl says smiling, lifting the bow ‘til her eye level.

Toni watches as Jughead prepares and throws the tennis ball ahead. He uses a lot of strength but he aims more up than forward so the ball gains a lot of height. Cheryl just waits a few seconds, following the object with the arrowhead; Toni can imagine perfectly the look of concentration on her face even if she can’t see it.

When the ball is almost on their height again, and almost reaching the beginning of the forest, Cheryl releases the string.

And of course she hits the arrow right on its target.

The others all cheer as Jughead just gapes at the tennis ball stuck on one of the trees by the arrow, and Toni has to laugh at his face.

“I told you so,” Archie murmurs, not bothering holding the smile.

Fangs shakes Jughead’s shoulders to take him out of the stupor, he’s not gonna let him live this down so easily, before high fiving Cheryl.

Toni is so focused on the scene she doesn’t hear to sound of footsteps behind her, and she jumps a little when Sweet Pea says “You know, I still don't think that’s a good idea, Toni.”

She turns to see him propped up against the wall beside the door, “What?”

“The search today. It'll be dangerous.” Sweet Pea murmurs and Toni sighs. So back to this discussion then, he goes on, “ _Especially_ when there’s no extreme need.”

“I've done this route a thousand times, Sweets.” Toni says, “We need to take advantage of the weather.”

During those weeks they’ve been here it was raining steadily almost the whole day. But yesterday and today not a drop had fallen from the sky, it will probably only start in the end of the afternoon, she assumes looking at the clouds. So if she’s going on another search it has to be today.

“Come on, Tiny. Remember the last time you left alone?” Sweet Pea walks beside her and gives her a knowing look and Toni glares at him, even though she knows he’s right.

Sighing she looks away from him, watching the people on the yard, Cheryl’s trying to teach an eager JB archery, showing her how to hold the bow properly, “Fine, I can take Cheryl with me then, if she want to.” Looking at Sweet Pea again she sees him narrow his eyes at her, “What?”

“Nothing,” he shrugs, “I still don’t like it, there’s always at least one more person there-”

“We don’t have time to waste and everyone else is busy.” She says, knowing that Veronica, Betty and Kevin went to the river, “And come on, there was six walkers coming here last week and four more two days ago. It's not safe here anymore! We can’t leave the house and the kids unprotected with just a few people.”

“I’m just saying that… there’s really no need for this search,” Sweet Pea gives her a worried look. “We’ll leave tomorrow, Toni.”

Oh yes, she didn’t forget. That’s the other reason today is the last day she would be able to go back to that condo for supplies, tomorrow Cheryl's group will go their way, on a car in good conditions they had found a week ago, while Toni and her friends will go another.

It’s time to leave she knows it, the house is being the walkers’ object of attack more often, Sweet Pea is already better from the concussion and Kevin is finally 100% cured from the infection he had. She doesn’t want to get into the dreading felling she has about tomorrow, she doesn’t want to make sense of it, because it _doesn’t_ make sense. They _have_ to leave and part. She always knew this would happen, so why doesn’t she want tomorrow to come?

“It's a long trip to the CDC,” Toni replies quietly, “We’ll need as much food as we can get. You’ll stay and fetch more water, right? We’ll need twice as much, so...”

Sweet Pea runs his hand through his messy hair, “Take at least someone else.”

“Seriously?” She rolls her eyes.

“I am not kidding,” he says, exasperated. “What if you catch a storm before you come back?”

“Cheryl and I are fast. We’ll go on the bike and come back before dark. If we take someone else we’ll have to bring the car and then it would take too long.”

“Are you sure?”

“After this whole talk, do you still think I’m not?” She says, laughing. Sweet Pea tries to hold back his smile, but she can see the corner of mouth twitching.

“Honestly I don't know why I still argue with you.” He grunts, rolling his eyes and disappears inside the house.

So she talks to Cheryl, who agrees to go right away.

They don’t have much light to waste, so she tells Cheryl to get whatever she needed so they could go soon. Toni walks over to the bike that is in front of the cars. She slides into the seat, taking one of the helmets on the handgrip and holds it on her lap, straightening her empty backpack on the front of her body as she waits for Cheryl.

“And I was thinking I’d be able to avoid this thing.”

Toni looks up to find Cheryl walking over to her, a soft smile touching her lips. Cheryl had successfully avoided riding on the bike with her whenever they went to the condo and Toni would take either Fangs or Veronica, ‘till now that is. Cheryl always went on the car, subjecting herself to walk to whole way between where they had to stop, to the gates and more.

“It’s not that bad, I promise.” Toni says, smirking.

“See,” Cheryl says pointing at her face, which only makes Toni’s smile widen. “I don’t trust that. I swear, if I die because of this thing or because you’re going too fast, I’ll come back to haunt you.”

“What makes you think that’d happen?”

“Toni, please, I’ve seen how you drive your car.”

Toni chuckles, “We are not dying because of the motorcycle,” She takes the other helmet offering it to Cheryl, “Come on, I won’t let you fall.”

Cheryl gets this look - Toni can't pinpoint what it is - but she's staring at Toni now, letting her gaze linger on her face.

When Cheryl finally breaks eye contact, she looks at the ground, catching her bottom lip between her teeth, as she walks over Toni. Cheryl takes the helmet from her hand and casts another look at Toni’s face before slipping into the seat behind her.

Toni can finally let out the breath she was long holding.

God, why is there so much tension? The amount of it could cut through steel. It’s been like that ever since that _fucking_ shirtless incident nearly three weeks ago- maybe since they met if she’s being honest.

And it hasn’t been easy.

Toni swallows hard and puts the helmet on, trying not to let her thoughts go further that direction.

“Hold on.” She says turning the key and takes her foot off the ground, the bike starting to move in a matter of seconds. 

Cheryl gives a little squeak and quickly wraps her hands around Toni’s waist, holding herself tightly to regain her balance. She laughs hearing Cheryl curse low behind her back.

They go down the gravel road and, shortly after, on the main highway. It’s close to noon and on the northern horizon some clouds threaten to become a storm. But if Toni and Cheryl are fast, as they usually are with the group, it won't take them more than four hours to get back and the sun will still be up.

The cold mid-January wind makes her shudder, especially at the speed they’re going. The landscape is reduced to a large forest of dense pines, also mixed with some oaks that fight for the weak sun above them. The putrid smell is finally almost gone after the storms. Maybe it’s a good sign.

Toni feels her breath hitch in her throat when Cheryl slips her hands under her leather jacket in an attempt to warm her fingers. Her hands fist around her shirt underneath the jacket tightly, and the constant light brush of Cheryl’s fingers, through the only fabric separating it from her skin,- and her front pressed flat against her back- should not cause tremors in Toni’s stomach or a slow heat to gather in her guts, but it does.

Cheryl doesn’t say anything, so she decides to do the same. She’s just protecting herself from the cold, it’s cool– Toni repeats it in her head.

Halfway to the condo something catches her attention: a car parked on the roadside. The hood is up and white smoke is coming from the engine making it clear that something is overheated.

Probably after hearing the sound of the motorcycle, a man steps away from looking at the engine, starting to wave with his arms in the air towards them. Soon after, a woman gets out of the car and Toni’s eyes widen when she sees the volume in her belly. She is pregnant and probably a lot of months in.

“Stop please!” their voices are already echoing. “Stop!”

“Should we stop?” Toni asks turning her head slightly to the side, her voice muffled by the helmet and the speed.

“I don't know.” Cheryl says reluctantly. “But she's pregnant, we can't leave them like this.”

“Cheryl,” she murmurs in warning, not sure if that’s a good idea.

“We don’t even need to get off the bike. It's just a man and a woman,” Cheryl suggests, “We can defend ourselves if anything happens.”

Toni sighs and slows down until they’re close enough to talk without being too close, stopping right there without turning off the bike if they need a quick exit.

“Thank God! Thank you so much for stopping.” the man says, giving them a relieved smile.

The man is tall and looks incredibly strong, his skin and clothes are dirt as well as his blonde hair. The woman also not in the best condition, her light brown hair is messy, eyes desperate. She has purple bruise on the left side of her jaw and it looks ugly and recent.

“Are you okay?” Cheryl asks removing the helmet, as Toni just lifts the visor of hers.

“Yeah, I can even believe we finally met with living humans again,” he says, his dramatic tone of voice makes it seem like an overstatement and that doesn’t go unnoticed by Toni. “My wife is seven months pregnant and ahm, we need some help here.” He gestures to the car and the steam still coming from under the hood.

“What happened?”

“The engine is running hot.” the man explains in a whimper.

Toni stays quiet, all she notices is the pregnant woman's light stares towards them and especially the empty backpacks. Nobody travels with empty backpacks except to look for something and she seems to have assumed this about them. The woman meets Toni’s eyes and automatically lowers her head.

“Where you’re going is too far away?” Cheryl continues.

“Actually, we don’t really have a destination.” He replies quickly.

It makes Toni even more suspicious. Something doesn't fit. Why would a man go out with his seven months pregnant wife around without a safe place?

“Where are you going?” the woman finally speaks. Toni narrows her eyes and interferes before Cheryl says anything.

“We have no destination either.” she says firmly. “We might go south.”

“Into the city?” The man scoffs. “Going to the big city is almost suicide, a big herd coming this way.”

“I don’t know, looks like a good chance.” She says, mentally rolling her eyes at his mocking expression. She rummages around the backpack on her front and takes out a bottle of water, “What caused the overheat is probably low coolant level. Wait a bit until the car cools off and add water to the radiator until is full.” She throws the bottle of water at him. 

“Um, thanks.” he takes the bottle and looks like he’s going to say something else but Toni cuts him off.

“I hope you can make the trip.” She replies blankly.

She turns the handle, hearing the bike roaring back to life and takes her foot off the ground when it starts moving, a little bit faster than she intended. Cheryl curses loudly this time for almost making her fall, holding on with only one hand around Toni’s waist as she clumsily puts the helmet on her head again. 

“What the fuck, Toni?” Cheryl asks so loudly that her voice comes out clear through the helmet.

“Something felt off, I don’t know,” she replies, pushing the motorcycle to go faster. “They asked where we were going, Cheryl, and you know very well what people want when they ask that.”

“I wasn’t going to tell them where we are.”

“I know… it’s just, the woman, she kept looking at our backpacks.” Toni retorts.

“Maybe she was desperate,” Cheryl says, as if it were obvious. “She _is_ pregnant, Toni.”

Toni doesn’t reply, just continues to drive as fast as she can. Something did felt wrong and her gut is always right when it comes to these things. When it becomes clear she’s not going to say anything else Cheryl sighs, Toni can hear it right next to her ear, even if she can’t feel it.

She doesn’t mull over what happened, at least she tries not to. And even if she’s wrong and they weren’t trying to rob them or whatever, it’s not like they can offer shelter to everyone they encounter on the road. They lucked out with Cheryl’s group (if you don’t count the first time she and Cheryl met, which Toni tries not to think of either), since they didn’t do anything to harm them and are actually pretty helpful. Toni even likes them, though she’s not going to admit it out loud. No.

About ten minutes later, they arrived at the outskirts of the condo, since they’re riding the bike Toni can now dodge all the cars and they quickly reach the entrance. She stops the bike and Cheryl gets out, walking to the gate to open it.

Looking around she sees a walker stumbling out from the side of a car ahead on the street slowly staggering towards Cheryl. Toni opens her mouth to warn her, but she already seems to notice the walker. 

The redhead grabs the bow and an arrow, quickly firing and hitting the walker between the eyes making it fall like a rag doll to the floor. She takes quick steps to it and removes the arrow from its head. Cheryl swings the arrow in the air to get rid of the excess of blood and walks back to the bike. 

All of this without even looking Toni in the face. Okay, is she mad? This is ridiculous.

Cheryl slides behind her and Toni waits a second so Cheryl can hold herself this time, and she doesn’t get yell at, before accelerating the bike again and only stopping it when she parks it near the fifth block, which they hadn’t yet checked before.

Cheryl jumps off the bike again, leaving the helmet there and Toni does the same, looking around for any danger. To the north, only one walker, with its characteristic grunt and crawl, wandering alone in the street, the walker is still too far away so she decides to leave it. They already know for sure that a few walkers wander around, but show no danger, at least when they’re alone, the real problem is when they come together in herds.

On their others searches here, they realized that the place is not as infested as they thought. But there’s an area to the east of the condo, not too far from where they are now, with about forty walkers wandering on an abandoned tennis court. A black fence holds them there and it’s very well chained, so Toni isn’t too worried about them. The walkers are also slower than normal, probably lethargic from hunger.

A whistle makes her look up. Cheryl signals for her to go to the backyard of one of the standard houses. Toni walks by the left side on a trail that leads to a small orchard and pool in the back.

A growl echoes behind some trees on the side and Toni draws out the machete from the sheath on her thigh. She strides towards a walker that has a deep bite on its collarbone and torn clothes. Toni quickly manages to yank the machete into its skull.

Another walker shows up from behind the pool, grunting quietly and walking towards Toni. Thank god that the walkers are all uncoordinated and don’t work together, so she gets the chance to deal with them one at a time in some cases.

But by the looks of it, she doesn’t think she will have to deal with this one at all. It keeps walking straight towards her, not realizing the pool in the way. Toni just watches as the walker slowly stumble, stepping on the edge of the pool. It finally falls with grunt and a splash of dirty water in all directions.

“Shit,” Toni whispers to herself, watching, a little distressed, the walker sinking easily to the bottom of the pool, its arms outstretched, eyes and mouth wide open trying to rise to the surface, unsuccessfully.

“What happened?” Cheryl's voice makes her turn around. She’s looking at her worriedly from the back door.

Toni walks over to the redhead and bypasses her at the door. “All good, just two walkers.”

Into the house, she walks directly to the kitchen and Cheryl climbs the creaky staircase to the second floor without saying another word. In the pantry and cabinets there’re a few canned beans that she throws into her backpack and a large amount of dog food, which she leaves untouched.

They walk out of the house after a while, leaving the bike parked there to keep searching to houses around here, Cheryl is already walking down the street and Toni runs a bit to catch up with her.

“Wait,” Toni steps beside her and decides to clear the air between them a little, she sighs, “Look, I'm sorry, ok?”

Cheryl frowns, a little smile on her face, “For what?”

“I don’t know, you seemed upset about leaving those people there.”

Cheryl doesn’t say anything for a few seconds as they keep walking. She lets out a heavy sigh, “You don’t need to apologize, I get it and I’m not mad.”

“Really?” Toni narrows her eyes at her, not believing a word she says.

Cheryl shrugs, “Really, and who knows. Maybe you were right; it’s weird, we drive through that road for three weeks now, never seeing anyone and them appearing out of nowhere today.”

Toni nods, “I just hoped we didn’t have to think like that.”

“Yeah,” she draws out the word, casting a sideway glace at Toni.

The air between them is no longer so heavy, and Toni feels a little better as they search the other houses around.

When it’s after four in the afternoon they decide it’s time to leave to avoid the storm coming. Their backpacks full of canned food, cookies and anything eatable they could find, as well as some medicine. A few walkers crossed their way, but not too many.

It’s been only one afternoon and she can hardly wait to go back to the house already. Ugh, she’s going soft.

The only problem is the thunder that bounce off in the distance every once in a while. Dense, dark clouds in the sky denying the streets of light. The cold wind whistles in her ears, even stronger than before, carrying the leaves of the street with them.

Toni is just waiting for Cheryl who is still inside one of the houses, she had left her there to bring the bike closer to where she is and park in front of it.

She leans against the motorcycle, hands on the pockets of her jacket to try and warm them. Toni takes one last look around to condo, if everything goes well, they won't need to come back here. She’ll probably never see this place again, but they need to move forward, that’s not debatable.

The faint sound of footsteps catches her attention, but they’re not coming from the house but from behind her. She’s about to turn her head, assuming it’s just a walker wandering alone when her heart nearly stops.

“TONI! Toni!” Cheryl shrieks, the last word being muffled, which causes Toni to snap her attention back to the house.

Before she even takes a step towards the house, she sees something from the corner of her eyes coming towards her face. An extremely hard blow to the side of her head makes her stagger and fall down. She uses her arms to ease the fall, but she just cries out from the sharp pain on her eyebrows, as well as in her head. She opens her eyes and her vision is blurred, her breath suddenly harsh and uneven. She brings her left hand to her head, at least it doesn’t seem like it’s bleeding. She takes a deep breath, trying to concentrate; she thinks of Cheryl.

Cheryl needs her. She was screaming for her. Toni tries to get up from the floor, but soon two strong hands grasp both of her ankles and pull, turning her back.

She groans as her head hits the pavement again. The corner of her eyes are turning blurring black and Toni feels it all catching up with her, the sudden exhaustion of her body, the dizziness taking over her-

She forces her eyes to open nonetheless, with the last string of energy she has left to look at the silhouette above her and she immediately recognize who it is. The man from the road earlier.

“Hello again,” he says, a smile touching his lips.

“Son of a bi-” 

Toni tries to say but she can’t, it’s too much energy and she has to close her mouth and eyes again, feeling the tightness growing in her throat, her head pounding-

Then it’s all black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look I don't know how cars work, I just googled 'what to do when cars overheat' and clicked on the first link (honestly, it didn't seem very trusting, but well) so if it doesn't make sense, pretend it does.
> 
> Also, ready for some *action* next chapter?


	10. run!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the wait guys. In my defense, first I was actually really busy but then taylor swift released an album out of nowhere again and like... I'm only human and got obsessed with it over the next days and then I got really busy again.  
> But here it iss, I finally finished when I had the time again. I just hope it's worth the wait.
> 
> Just a few things: the new characters here are all OC's, just to make it clear.
> 
> Also note that this chapter is on Toni's pov again, I know I've been alternating since the beginning but I needed this to be on her perspective.  
> And later chapters I may do the same thing, but worry not, it'll be easy to notice.
> 
> Hope you like it!

_"Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”_   
_-William Shakespeare_

Toni wakes up slowly.

Her whole body aches in some strange, yet familiar way; even opening her eyes seems like an impossible endeavor. She inhales, listening to the sounds around her as they filter in: the murmur and footsteps of people seeming so far away and the breathing of someone beside her.

The worst pain is probably her head, it throbs so much that it feels like it’s going to explode any minute now, but the pain reminds her that she’s alive, for now at least, which is good.

She tries to move her hands, but they’re stuck. Tied up together. She feels something inside her mouth too, preventing her from closing her jaw, a piece of cloth maybe.

Toni forces her eyes open. 

She focuses her vision on the floor first, lifting her head slightly so she can see the room, albeit blurry.

She’s inside a living room of some house, she recognizes it after a few seconds as the one they were checking before… That couple from the road. Everything is coming back to her.

Toni feels her heart pounding against her chest, and as her vision clears, she finds a wide-eyed Cheryl, sitting next to her on the floor.

Cheryl stares at Toni in desperation, she’s also gagged, her wrists tied together in front of her. Her lower lip is swollen from a cut in the right corner.

Toni tries again to pull her hands from the ropes, but it’s no use. It’s tied too hard, but maybe if she continues like this for long minutes she could get rid of them.

Looking over Cheryl’s shoulder, she realizes that the sun is no longer in the sky. Outside, the storm is falling heavily with the occasional lightning through the window glass above them followed by a thunder.

“She woke up.” A woman’s voice makes her look towards the stairs that led to the second floor.

The same woman of the road is looking at them, sadness clouding her features. She’s sitting on one of the steps, but something is wrong, it takes a second for Toni to realize her belly is normal now, no trace of pregnancy.

It was a fucking scam. She knew there was something off about them. And she didn’t notice, but somehow they managed to follow her and Cheryl.

From the other side, the man who knocked her out on the street walks to stand in the middle of the room, he’s holding a flashlight, and this, an old oil lamp and the little light coming from outside are the only things illuminating the living room.

“Finally,” he flashes the light in her direction making her close her eyes at the sharp, sudden prick of brightness.

She squints, trying to adjust and focus her eyes.

“Great trick, right?” He asks, smiling. “Did you see that coming?”

He moves to stand in front of them. A hard, loud hum rumbles in her throat at the proximity but the only reaction she gets is his smile widening.

“See, we usually have a much more… harmless plan. We don’t usually take people.”

“Matt, we talked about this.” The woman in the back of the room pleads, “Come on.”

“But you two look extremely clean, I bet you have somewhere to stay right? People to go back to?” Matt says ignoring her. “See where I’m going with it?” He gestures his hand in the air.

A heat of fury flare in her body, if he thinks she’ll lead him to her group, he better think twice. Toni looks away from him and just bites hard the cloth inside her mouth to contain the anger.

“Hey look at me!” He throws a weak kick on Toni’s shin.

“Matt, stop it.” the woman asks again.

“Shut up, Leah!” He yells in a sudden flare of temper, turning slightly to glare at the woman.

Several thoughts go through Toni’s mind quickly. They have to get of here, this guy is looking really unstable. She just needs to take him down, untie them, find the keys of her bike, get out.

Easy.

She sees a knife sheath on Matt, tied to the waistband of his jeans. Maybe Toni can reach for it and use it.

“I’m just saying-” Leah tries to talk again but cuts herself off when Matt turns fully towards her.

This gotta be it. He’s got his back to Toni, vulnerable. Leah isn’t paying attention to them, just staring terrified at Matt.

Toni makes a motion to get up, getting on one knee and putting one foot flat on the floor. But she feels a hand on her hip making her look quickly towards Cheryl and she shakes her head at Toni. She frowns, _we can’t just do nothing_ , she wants to say. If Toni can just take the knife, she can deal with him, she doesn’t think the woman will be much problem.

“ _You_ don’t get a say in this!” Matt hisses loudly, taking a step away from them.

Toni looks at Matt’s back again, but before she could even take an impulse to jump him, a cold voice echoes around the room.

“Don’t even think about it.”

On the door leading to the entrance hall, there’s another guy pointing a gun at her. She didn’t hear the footsteps over the rain outside, and seconds later two men fully enter inside the room. _Shit._

“Back to the wall.” He orders, only lowering the gun once Toni sits again.

This man is shorter than the other two, but seemed strong through the thick jacket. Blonde, a dirty looking beard covering half of his face.

While the other one is a dark-skinned man with a shaved head, he stays back shaking his dripping jacket from the heavy rain outside.

Toni eyes the man on the back, he looks at Leah briefly, putting a hand on her shoulder and mouthing something Toni doesn’t hear, to what Leah just nods.

When Toni looks again he had already retrieved his hand and is walking to the other side of the room. Narrowing her eyes, she looks for any weapons on him. He has a gun too, on the waistband of his pants, and Toni almost misses it but she recognizes the keys of her motorcycle trapped on a belt loop.

Toni has to look away when the other blonde guy steps closer to them, the resemblance between him and Matt is enormous that they must be related.

“I’m glad you woke up,” he crouches in front of Toni and she immediately presses herself closer to the wall. “See, I talked to your friend here, but she wasn’t much of a help, unfortunately.”

He glances at Cheryl sighing before turning his eyes back to Toni.

“I know you have a group, we found a walkie talkie on you, so…” he raises his hands to take the gag off Toni’s mouth, letting it loosen around her neck and she flexes her jaw absently. “We just want to know a few things about them.”

Toni grits her teeth, eyes flashing furiously, “Fuck off.”

It’s his time to grit his teeth as he glances up to the ceiling, he opens his mouth but before he could say something, the other new man speaks up for the first time.

“Derek,” the guy addresses him, “We don’t need to do this, and you must know it’s too risky.”

“You don’t rule over us, Henry.” Matt bites out, “We can do whatever we want.”

Matt turns around, staring him down and Toni wonders if they’re about to have a fist fight. She isn’t sure if it would be a good thing for them or not.

“If you want to die trying to take down an entire group, go ahead. But I won’t be a part of it.”

“You can shove your part up yo-”

Derek groans exasperatedly, “Shut up. It doesn’t matter, we don’t have much time.”

"What are you talking about?" Matt asks, frowning.

Derek sighs, "We were walking around and there's a pack inside the condo. At least thirty, they’re a little bit far away but they are coming this direction."

_Wait, what?_

"Damn it!" Matt mumbles.

“They were probably stuck somewhere and the storm helped them escape.” Henry points out. Toni thinks it might be the walkers from that tennis court, could it be? A storm taking down that fence? Maybe, she reasons, it was a really old one.

“We have to fix a way to get out fast.”

“Come on.” Matt basically whines, “You said the pack is still far, I say we try to get something out of these two.”

“Guys seriously?” Henry shakes his head, “Look, can we just leave them trapped in the basement so we can talk about this?” Henry asks Derek, ignoring the other man.

He seems to think it through for a few seconds, “Okay, let's talk and find a way to get out of here first.” Derek decides to which Matt groans and rolls his eyes.

Derek walks over to Toni, “There’s no need to fight it, right? Come on,” The man grabs one of her arms and pulls her upright as Matt does the same with Cheryl.

Toni does think of fighting it, but four against two tied people isn’t a chance she’s excited to take.

They walk through a hall until Matt, who is in front of them dragging Cheryl, opens an old wooden door. Complete darkness surrounded the basement, the light of Matt’s flashlight the only thing allowing them to see something. Derek continues to drag Toni across the dusty floor and as they descend the stairs. He drops her abruptly in the center of the room.

“We’ll talk more later.”

“Come on, Matt!” Derek snarls.

They go up the stairs again and close the door, enveloping the room in complete darkness again. Toni hears the sounds of the door being locked and curses mentally. She can’t see anything and the only thing she can hear now is the sound of the rain coming down outside, even if muffled and Cheryl’s uneven breath from somewhere around her.

“Cheryl?” she calls out quietly.

“I’m here.”

Toni hears her voice coming from her right; she obviously had taken the gag off her mouth now that they aren’t being watched by their captors. She gets up, only staggering slightly, it takes a few seconds for her eyes adjust to the darkness but she can see now a barely shadow of a person sitting, her back against a supporting pillar.

She start to walk in the dark towards Cheryl, stopping only when her foot touches something, Toni supposes is Cheryl’s own foot and sits next to her, just listening to her breathing for a few seconds.

“Are you alright?” Toni asks quietly into the darkness and immediately cringes, “That’s a stupid question, but at least not badly hurt or something?”

She hears a sigh, “No, I’m fine. You?”

“I’ve been better.” Toni is still trying to control her uneven breath and her heart beating like crazy. She has to figure out a way to get out of there and past the people upstairs. There’s a small window high on the wall opposite to them but she doubts they can get thought it, even if they reach it.

So it has to be through the door. The locked door. Then sneak past four armed people into a storm and, if what they said is true, a group of walkers coming this way.

Her worried thoughts are interrupted when Cheryl says, “Give me your hands.”

“What?” she turns to face Cheryl and almost bumping their heads. Too close. Toni can see the shape of her eyes staring at her.

“Your hands.”

Oh, the ties. She almost forgot about that. Toni rotates her body to face Cheryl putting her bound hands in front of her. And then in the next second, she shudders at feeling Cheryl placing her hands on her lap and with trembling fingers and her own clamped hands, she tries to untie the strings on Toni’s wrists.

Cheryl whimpers after maybe two minutes trying. “Damn it.”

“Just keep going, stay calm.”

“ _How_ am I supposed to stay calm?” Cheryl snaps, then she pauses a bit and Toni hears her breathing in and out sharply. Cheryl is so close Toni can feel the puff of air from it on her face. “Sorry.”

She goes back to trying to untie Toni’s bound hands in silence. She stays at for a few more seconds and with a tug she finally manages to undo the last knot. Toni lets out a relived breath and gets rid of the ropes. She rubs her wrists, felling the tender skin she’s sure is getting bruised.

“We’ll get out of here,” Toni says with as much confidence as possible, even if it’s false bravado, taking Cheryl's wrists to work on her binds.

“How?” she replies in a whisper.

“I don’t know yet.” Toni admits quietly. She nearly jumps when a thunder resonates outside, she almost forgot about the storm, another thing to worry about.

“Thanks.” Cheryl whispers when Toni finally releases her hands from the ropes with some difficulty. “We won't be able to leave until the storm is over, right? What if the zombies get here early?”

“Actually, the storm might be a good thing in this case.” Toni says, “It can slow them down and we can hide, the problem will be if something draws their attention to us.”

Cheryl nods, “We need to go through the living first.”

But _how_? Toni doesn’t think they’ll win if comes down to a fight, they don’t have any kind of weapon, so they have to leave without them realizing it. And if they’re lucky to find their weapons on the way that’s good, but not that she has her hopes up for that. The main goal would be just get out as fast as possible.

The problem is leave this basement. They have to find a way to open that door.

“We can wait until they come down here, ride and surprise them.” Cheryl suggests.

There’s a lightning on the sky that illuminates the basement for two seconds through the high window. Toni can distinguish a few things on the room in that time, there’s a shelf under the window and a desk beside it.

“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” She says before swiftly getting up and walking towards the desk slowly, hoping she doesn’t bump into anything with the room enveloped in darkness again.

Stretching her arm, she only stops when she feels the corners of the desk, and she touches the surface feeling for whatever there’s on it.

She doesn’t find anything at first, just the wooden material of the desk. Sliding her hand she feels some type of cloth, fluffy fabric. Maybe blankets, not really useful right now. Her hand bumps into something else, making a little clink, like an object hitting on metal. Wrapping her hand around it, it looks like a cup. A pen holder. With exactly one pen in it.

Okay, at least it’s something, she’ll take it. She grabs the pen and puts it into her jacket pocket.

“What are you doing?” Cheryl asks from behind her.

“Just looking for something.” She replies absently.

Toni opens the first drawer under the table: nothing. The second one is full of papers, she’s about to close it too when an idea hits her. She takes the papers, feeling for what she’s looking for. And yes, they are tied with a paper clip. She takes it and looks for any other load of papers in the drawers. In the end, she’s able to find three paper clips; and Toni allows herself to feel a little bit of hope that they’re getting out alive.

“Cheryl?” Toni calls out, hearing a murmur in response. “I think I can open the door.” She says it and walks in the directing of, as far as she can tell, is the stairs.

“How?”

Toni doesn’t answer at first, just concentrates on climbing the stairs quietly and without stumbling and falling down, she hears Cheryl right behind her doing the same.

When she reaches the door, she crouches in front of it, putting her ear flat on the wood trying to listen to anything from outside, but she doesn’t hear anything.

Looking down, she unfolds the first paper clip to a straight line and the second until the paper clip is two straight wires with a curve at the end.

This is going to be challenging in the dark, at best.

“You know how to pick up a lock?” Cheryl whispers.

“Kind of.”

She inserts the second one into the keyhole, careful to apply pressure but not too much pressure that it’ll twist the paper clip, and turning it in the direction Toni hopes the lock turns. She inserts the straight paper clip next and ranks it felling for the pins inside the lock.

She winces a little when the motion makes a tinkling sound, she just hopes it doesn’t draw attention from anyone in the house.

Toni stays at it for what feels like hours, already feeling the sweat dripping from her forehead, when she finally feels a slight give and a soft clicking noise.

“It worked?” Cheryl query surprised, and if they were in any other situation Toni would feel offended by the lack of trust, but now she can only feel anxious about what they’ll face.

“Look, we need to sneak past them. Just get out of the house, it’s our best chance.” Toni whispers, looking at Cheryl over her shoulder.

“Right.”

Standing up, Toni places her hand on the cold door handle, praying to whoever is listening that they get out of there alive. She casts one last look at Cheryl, “Don't leave my side, okay?”

“Okay.” She whispers back softly.

Toni takes a deep breath and turns the knob as slowly and quietly as the air that comes out of her lungs.

Pulling the door carefully to avoid any noise from the rusty parts, the corridor is empty as she steps into it. She looks to one side, seeing just a wall, a dead end, so no back door. Only leaving them with moving in the direction they were dragged from earlier. A thunder echoes in the distance, helping to muffle their steps across the dusty hardwood floor.

Walking down the hall, they move past an empty office, and two closed doors on the other wall, until she hears a conversation from the next door ahead where she thinks is the kitchen, if her memory is correct. They stop walking immediately.

“It’s not a crazy idea, man.” Matt's voice echoes from the room, “If we can get them to talk-”

“The trick of the pregnancy won’t work forever.” Derek replies. Toni hears a clinking noise, like he’s going through some silverware.

“That's why we need to find a larger group, more people more supplies.” Matt says.

“Even if they tell us, we get there, and then do what?”

“Take everything they got, and if they don’t cooperate we kill them, we have the fire power.”

Toni clenches her fist tightly. _Like hell you will_.

She tries to calm down, thinking if it’s worth just start to run for the front door now, since there’s no way they can get past this hall without passing beside the kitchen door causing the assholes to see them.

“We still have the Henry problem, he won’t like it. And I don’t know how long I can keep him in a leash for.”

“We can get rid of him. I’d be happy not to look at his fucking face anymore.” Matt spats out.

“He’s smart and resourceful.” Derek says, and she can hear the laugh in his tone. “I won’t get rid of him just because you feel possessive of your wife.”

Matt groans loudly, there’s the sound of a slap echoing from the room followed by a barked laugh.

She’s about to turn and sign to Cheryl that this might be the chance to just run for the exit now when, without her hearing his footsteps, Matt leaves the kitchen and comes face to face with Toni.

His eyes widen and Toni barely gives the man time to react before she punches his face.

She hisses from pain on her hand, and Matt winces but mostly only looks enraged by it. _Come on…_

“Run!” Toni urges, searching for Cheryl behind her.

Matt moves faster, now over his surprised upon seeing them and gets a hold of Toni arms tightly, she tries to block his way from Cheryl so she can run for the door, but of course she fucking doesn’t and tries to help her.

Cheryl runs to stand behind Matt and digs her nails into his eyes. He screams in pain, letting go of Toni’s arms to takes Cheryl’s hands of his face. At this moment Derek appears at the kitchen door, his gaze stopping on Cheryl and he jumps after her.

Cheryl grunts as Derek yanks her out of Matt.

Shit shit shit.

When Toni goes to move past him, Matt lunges forward again, hugging her from behind and trapping her arms to her body. _Is this man made of stone? What the fuck?_ She starts struggling against him, kicking and punching to escape.

“We gonna have to trap you two in separate places hum?” Derek says and Toni focuses on him to see he has a hold of Cheryl as well who is fighting tooth and nail to free herself. “I’ll lock this one on the bathroom.” He then starts to drag her towards the kitchen.

Her blood boils and she trashes against Matt even harder, she throws her head backwards and hits his face. Matt staggers for a moment allowing her to get rid of his arms around her.

Toni turns around quickly lifts her knee up hard and kicks Matt on his crotch. He cries out loud in pain and falls on his knees to the floor with his hands on his genitals.

“You fucking bitch!”

In the background she hears the screams of Cheryl's fight against Derek and Toni has no idea who is winning.

When she tries to run to the kitchen, Toni feels a hand hold her right ankle, immobilizing her. Her ankle is pulled back and she falls down on the floor using her arms to avoid hitting her head. She winces, feeling a sharp pain of her elbows. _This fucking bastard doesn’t stay down_.

Matt stands up and walks towards her. Toni tries to crawl desperately in the opposite direction of the corridor but Matt grabs and pulls her by the feet.

He drags her to the nearest door and opens it, pulling Toni to her feet and shoving her unceremoniously to the floor and she hits her back against a bed.

“You really thought you would get past us?” Matt takes out the key from the lock on the inside and places it on the lock outside. He turns to her with a sadistic smile and though his eyes _are_ a little red and wet, she sees now that most of the damage Cheryl made was around his eyes, under it and above Toni can see red vicious scratches. “No matter what, we’re gonna find your group if it’s the last thing I do and we’ll kill all of them just for this little stunt you two pulled.”

Toni desperately tries to think of what to do. She can’t be stuck in here, she might not be so lucky with the lock this time. She would fight some more, but Matt is way stronger than her, it would be a waste of energy and only earn her a few more bruises. She needs to distract or provoke him. If he’s not thinking clearly she might have a chance.

“Yeah? Half of _your_ group doesn’t seem to agree with that.” She points out, hoping this buys her some time.

“They don’t fucking matter, Derek will see it too, Henry is all full of himself. We don’t fucking need him.”

An idea comes to mind, she doesn’t know if it’ll work, but she has to try. Even if is just to put a little more doubt in his head. And from what she has seen and heard from the men’s talk a minute ago, it’s already in his mind.

“Your wife doesn’t seem to think so.”

She gets the reaction she wanted. Matt stops moving, his hand on the door handle squeezing it tightly, as he shoots her a death glare.

“You don’t know what you taking about.” He groans lowly.

“Come on, don’t tell you don’t see it. You haven’t seen them in a while, have you? What do you think they’re doing?” She smirks at him, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

“Shut up.”

“Or they probably already left together for good.”

“Shut up.” He steps back into the room.

“Honestly I would too, just to not have to look at your disgusting face anymore.” She spats out viciously, digging her right hand into the pocket of her jacket, fisting it around her only weapon.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

Seeing red, Matt starts to make quick steps towards her as he looks down at her, face twisted with rage and hatred.

In a quick movement, Toni rolls to the side at the last moment, already twisting her body to face Matt, kicking hard against his left knee. She hears a cracking sound of his bone moving out of place. He cries out in pain crumbling to the ground.

Toni takes the pen out of her pocket and quickly stabs it into his hand splayed out on the floor without flinching.

He doesn’t reach for her ankle this time as Toni, ignoring his scream, stands up to her feet and runs out of the room, closing the door and locking it. She takes the key out and throws it across the hall.

Toni takes a deep breath. She knows she has little time before Matt composes and crashes this door to the ground.

She runs across the hall looking for Cheryl, entering the kitchen she but it’s empty and the bathroom door at the corridor on the other side of the room is wide open. Shit, where are they?

Then a scream tears through the house. _Cheryl_. She runs out of there and into the living room.

She’s there just in time to see Cheryl elbowing Derek hard in the throat. He lets out a little gasping noise, and she twists in his suddenly loose grasp, getting rid of the arms around her and punching him hard in the face. Toni hears a crunch.

Cheryl looks behind his shoulder and they make eye contact. For a few seconds that felt like so much more, Toni doesn’t focus on anything else but Cheryl’s face, noticing she’s got a new bleeding cut on her cheekbone besides the one on her bottom lip, but especially the look on Cheryl’s eyes soaring with worry and hope at the same time.

“You bitch!” Derek shouts, his voice a little muffled from the blood coming out of his nose. Clearly losing patience he says, “That’s enough! I didn’t want to kill you, but you’re asking for it.”

He takes the gun off the holster but before he can lift it, Toni launches herself at him, she grabs desperately for his gun as he yells out surprised, but he’s determined to hold on. He grabs her hair with his other hand, trying to yank her away. Toni ignores the tears of pain that come to her eyes and keeps fighting for it.

Through the corner of her blurry eyes she sees Cheryl running to the opposite side of the living room. To do what Toni doesn’t have a clue, but she hopes she does it fast.

Derek suddenly lets out a brassy scream, letting go of the gun and her hair, as he falls to his knees clutching his hands on his right tight where Toni can see an arrow wedged there.

Toni stumbles backwards a little, gazing at Cheryl still with her bow raised, knocking another arrow. Looking back at Derek and his enraged glare, Toni doesn’t waste time and kicks his nose hard before he could get up.

He falls to the side and Toni lands another kick at the side of his head. And another, and another. She hears something in the back of her mind, like her name being called but she doesn’t listen, anger flooded her senses. She keeps kicking for all she’s worth.

“Toni!”

She feels a pull on her shoulder and she looks back sharply to see Cheryl staring at her like she’s approaching a wild animal. Toni blinks.

“You’re gonna kill him.” Cheryl's voice comes out firm, but then her eyes are soft, understanding. Toni looks down at Derek, his face swollen with new bruises and cuts, clearly passed out and shallow breaths coming out of his lips.

“That’s what he deserves. He kidnaped us, tried to kill you.” Toni says quietly before catching her gaze again.

“He’s already passed out.” Cheryl hands her something, her clouded mind takes a few seconds to identify what it is: her machete. “This and my bow are the only of our things here. Let’s just get out.”

Cheryl stares at her, eyes pleading. And Toni swallows thickly, she’s too tired to fight with Cheryl, especially about this.

“Okay,” she says, putting an end to the strange silence that fell between them, she fastens the machete’s sheath around her tight again.

She also takes the gun beside Derek’s body and just follows Cheryl to the front door of the house.

The rain is still coming down strong, and as they step out of the house Toni leaves the door open; if any walker get in there and bites him, she had nothing to do with it.

Walking into the yard, she notices the motorcycle isn’t there, “What the hell!”

“Do you think Henry took and left with it?”

“I really hope not,” Toni mumbles.

Cheryl narrows her eyes to a few houses ahead, “Come on.” She takes Toni’s hand pulling her there.

Attentive to everything, they walk out quickly through the tall bushes separating the houses. The cold drops of rain fall against her jacket and through her clothes making withstanding the already low temperature way harder.

They stop only four houses later finding the bike lying on the grass of some yard, like someone tried to drive it but didn’t know how and lost control of it.

Toni lifts the motorcycle, shifting the side stand to keep it upright. She briefly looks for the keys, but of course they’re not there.

Looking around the street, she sees a few walkers wandering around on both sides of it. She pulls Cheryl by the hand to the side of the house so that they are not seen from a distance.

“We need to find Henry before this place is infested with walkers. He's got the bike keys.”

“If he’s even still here,” Cheryl says darkly, she shakes her head, “Toni, it’s too dangerous to leave in the storm.”

“I know, but we have to get the keys anyway.”

“We need-” Cheryl doesn’t finish speaking when, over her shoulder, Toni notices a movement behind her back.

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” Matt is in the middle of the street with a gun pointed in their direction, limping towards them as fast as he can with the injured leg. Toni stares at him with wide eyes and shocked when she feels a pair of hands push her aside seconds before the shot.

Her back hits the wall of the house and Cheryl's body crashes into Toni’s after pushing her. She doesn’t even have time to think straight before Cheryl is taking her hand and pulling Toni in the opposite direction of Matt.

They run down to the back of the house, right before she turns the corner there’s another shot. Toni swears she feels the heat of the bullet passing close to her back inches from hitting her.

They cross the pool area and jump over the bushes separate this from the next house. Her boots skid in the mud on the grass when she suddenly stops upon seeing three walkers with their characteristic step walking towards them.

“Damn it!” Cheryl snarls and pulls Toni in another direction. They move to the house behind this one, on the next street.

The fence separating it is taller and Cheryl lets go of her hand to jump it and sit on the top. Toni does the same, knowing she’s only able to do this so easily because of the adrenaline coursing through her body.

Cheryl jumps down and Toni briefly looks back to see Matt turning around the house, still following them.

He raises the gun and fires. She can tell this guy isn’t thinking clearly, the shot misses them by far.

Before Toni jumps down the fence she takes the rain-dripping gun, still clutched on her hand that wasn’t holding Cheryl’s and shoots.

She doesn’t think it hits him since the gunshot is followed closely by two more from him, but she manages to get behind the fence before those. The piercing sounds surely getting the attention of every walker close by.

“You can’t hide forever.” Matt yells from the other side.

Wandering bodies come out from behind the houses and growl loudly. The rain seems to get worse at every moment and it’s more difficult to see anything in front of her. Cheryl pulls her hand again until they are jumping another bush to the next house.

And _fuck_. There’re walkers coming from everywhere and Matt is already jumping the fence behind them, surprisingly fast considering the twisted knee.

“We need to split.” Toni says with the little breath she has left. Cheryl looks at her as if Toni said the greatest stupidity she’s ever heard.

“Toni, don’t-”

“Trust me, just jump back the fence to the other street.”

Toni doesn't let her refute and turns in the opposite direction, running around the house, hoping Cheryl will do as she told. Toni dodges two walkers holding its arms out and keeps running until she reaches the sidewalk.

Toni dares to look back again before crossing the street and sees Matt at the back of the house following her and not Cheryl and she holds the sigh of relief.

Matt fires against the two walkers before trying to do it again and the gun not working. Toni realizes he finally emptied the magazine as he throws the gun to the side but keeps running towards her, supporting most of his weight on his right leg.

Turning back, Toni stops running, nearly slipping across the pavement, horrified at the approaching walkers coming from one side of the street. So many she knows this is the pack Derek was talking about earlier, the gunshots definitely getting their attention.

They’re still a little bit far away and walking slowly than the others she encountered so far, maybe because of the rain, but they’ll get here in one minute tops.

Coming back to herself, she looks at Matt’s direction again, seeing him so much closer now. She aims her gun at him.

He slows down his running but doesn’t stop moving towards her. He takes a knife from the sheath on the waistband of his jeans, holding it at the side of his body. Toni grips the gun tightly on both of her hands and breathes out.

Matt shoots her a sickly wide smile, “You’re not going to shoot me.”

The storm screams in her ears. The sound of the rain pattering on the hard pavement is the only thing she can hear. And the water soaking through her clothes making her shiver is the only thing she focuses on feeling.

It splatters against her face, forcing her to blink hard as to not lose sight of the man in front of her, and slides down toward her neck. It pounds against her outstretched arms making it harder to keep it that way but she refuses to flinch; and against the material of her shirt now plastered to her chest.

Matt takes another step before stopping, still staring at her.

Then suddenly he is running. Raising the knife on his hand, pointing it at Toni.

She doesn’t fully register she pulled the trigger until the violent ring of the gunshot assaults her ears over the roar of the rain.

Toni gasps as she feels the edge of Matt’s knife slice through the side of her arm before his body slams into Toni’s, and they stumble backward, her back hitting the ground with a thud and a grunt.

Toni breathes heavily and gingerly shoots out from under his sagging weight, she freezes at the man’s lifeless gaze, a gun wound straight to the heart, and she shuts her eyes tight. Her heart races, and her shaking fist sticks shut with blood when she clenches it.

She shot him. She killed someone.

Her stomach turns, and she briefly thinks she’ll lose the breakfast from this morning – it feels like a lifetime ago – but her eyes flicker open at the groans becoming louder each second.

Behind Matt’s body, Toni’s stomach drops seeing a few walkers closer to them, looking even more agitated by the smell of blood and the loud noise. And the pack still a little far behind them taking slow steps here.

Toni stands up quickly, taking a few stumbling steps backwards watching as the first walker gets to Matt’s body snapping and pulling the flesh skin off his neck. The skin stretched along with the tense muscle. There’s blood splashed everywhere when two more walkers join the other one, they snarl to each other as they smash more of Matt’s limbs.

Toni swallows hard and finally turns away, running back to the houses in the opposite direction of the walkers. When she looks to side, in front of the next house, she sees Henry and Leah staring at the scene that she just witnessed, of Matt’s body being torn apart.

Neither Henry nor Leah looks angry, but maybe astonished. Henry turns his gaze at her, raising his gun at her.

Toni does the same.

“We followed the gunshots.” He says still looking shocked, it seems like Toni was right after all; it feels like they were planning to get away. Both of them have one backpack each and in the back of her mind, Toni notices is hers and Cheryl’s backpacks.

“Look man, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to find my friend and get out of here.”

Henry seems to think over the situation for a few seconds, the gun shaky in his hands.

“Come on, I just need the keys.”

“Henry.” Leah says squeezing his arm, “Give her the keys and let's go, please.”

Then Henry takes a deep breath and nods his head lowering his gun. He reaches the keys attached to the loop of his jeans.

“I'm sorry about all this.” He says before throwing her the keys. It lands in front of her feet on the sidewalk.

She picks it up, seeing both of them walking slow steps backwards, looking at something over her shoulder and she turns on her back. The approaching walkers are so much closer and don’t seem a lot interested on the body lying dead on the floor in front of them. She looks over her shoulder and Henry and Leah are no longer there. 

_Cheryl!_ Her blurred mind suddenly screams. Toni tries not to focus on the pain on her arm, where surely there’s a cut from Matt’s knife, before she start running away from the walkers that rhythmically walked, grunting and snarling.

She jumps the fence behind the houses to the other street, she has no idea which side Cheryl went so she just chooses the one opposite to the house they were trapped in before and keeps running.

There’s a body of a walker lying of the ground and Toni notices an arrow stuck in its head. Okay, so she chose the right side at least. She runs to it, taking the arrow as she passes beside it. There’re some walkers ahead and behind her already making their way towards her so she says _fuck it_ and yells with everything she’s got.

“CHERYL!”

Toni runs her shaking hands through her soaked hair in an unsuccessful attempt to keep it off her face. She dodges a walker appearing out of nowhere in front of her and turns around the corner on the side of a house.

The worst case scenarios start to play in her mind, she was the one the wanted to split, if something happened to Cheryl...

She looks back, seeing a group of four or five walkers getting closer and closer to her. Still running, when she reaches the front of the house Toni crashes into a body and she imagines it to be a walker about to snap a piece of her skin.

She looks ahead and the face she was so desperately looking for is holding her shoulders preventing her from falling over.

“Thank god you’re okay!” Toni lets out a sigh of relief. “I got the keys.”

“We don't have time, Toni. Run!” she says. Cheryl takes her hand, intertwining their finger and pulls her off.

She balances herself and looks to the middle of the street, immediately regretting it. There’s a pack of its own on this side, maybe ten walkers groaning and stumbling this way.

Desperately they rush into the next house. Toni closes the door abruptly while Cheryl is already dragging a sofa to place against the door.

Cheryl pushes more furniture towards the windows and Toni runs in search of more doors in the house that led to the outside. After checking the back door and the rooms for any walker – it’s thankfully empty -, she and Cheryl both stop in the living room and watch the street outside through a small crack on the window.

Some walkers are banging against the door, but most of them luckily walked right by. And she breathes another sigh of relief.

When Toni turns away from the window she barely has time to react to the arms wrapping around her waist in a tight hug.

Toni stands stiffly against her for a second but then her body slowly collapses around Cheryl, her arms encasing her with one hand on the middle of her back and the other on the nape of Cheryl’s neck.

Cheryl doesn’t say anything at all, the longer they stay like that the tighter Cheryl’s grip becomes until her fingertips dig into Toni’s back almost painfully and Toni swears she can feel Cheryl’s heart hammering against her chest. Her breaths are heavy against the crook of Toni’s neck where her face is buried, like she is desperate for some type connection after this _fucking_ long day.

Toni can feel her own heart throbbing in her throat. She holds Cheryl as tightly as she can manage and she still doesn’t feel like it’s enough. She doesn’t feel like it will ever be enough.

“Hey. Everything is fine.” Toni whispers stroking her damp hair lightly, “We’re safe.”

“I just thought we would…” she trails off. Cheryl’s grip on her eases and they slowly pull away of their embrace until she can look Cheryl in the eyes.

“It's all right, I thought it too. But we’re okay.” Toni says, they’re still standing close, and Toni can feel the heat of her body. She can feel Cheryl’s breath skirt across her face. And has to fight a strange urge to pull her back in, the warmth and the promise of more contact is tempting, but Cheryl is as overwhelming as the complicated web of emotions Toni is feeling right now. “What do you think of going up there? It’s safer than on the first floor.”

Cheryl nods weakly and steps back further away from Toni. She can see a blush gradually deepening on Cheryl’s cheeks, probably after realizing what she’s done. Cheryl clears her throat and looks down from Toni’s eyes only for her own to suddenly widen looking at Toni’s torso.

“Toni!” Cheryl gasps latching her hands on the lapels of her jacket, and Toni stares at her confused, “Are you hurt?”

Toni looks down at herself to see her white shirt stained red with blood. _Matt’s blood._ From when she killed him. Toni swallows thickly. Cheryl is frantically feeling for some injure that won’t be found.

“Cheryl,” Toni’s hands come up to gently latch onto Cheryl’s wrists and stop her. “It’s not my blood.”

Cheryl looks up at her then, her eyes are still wide as they stare at each other for long seconds, Toni trying to convey… what? What had happened? She honestly doesn’t know.

Cheryl licks her lips, takes a breath and nods, and it feels like she understood. “Okay.” She says, Toni expects to be pushed back, forced away, who knows. But Cheryl just stays there, on her space, for a few more seconds until she awkwardly points her finger up, “So, let’s…” she trails off.

“Right,” Toni whispers. She watches as Cheryl turns away and heads up the stairs until she is out of her line of sight.

Toni finally breathes out, she runs her hand through her hair, still a little stunned by all that happened today, from the life or death situation to Cheryl’s sudden gesture of affection.

Everything is under control, they’re safe. They’ll spend who knows how many hours there until the storm passes and they can go back. _Everything is under control._ Toni wonders if she says it enough times, she’ll start believing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pheww! The worst is over ( or is it?? *suspense music* )  
> This is my longest chapter yet. I always get carried away writing action scenes, and this is the cut version...  
> Again, sorry for taking so long, I'll try to uptade the next chapter faster, but I can't make any promises. Though I'm really excited for that one.🤫


	11. there's this fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo... it seems like I'm always apologizing for the delay on the update and I really do feel awful about it, so I'm sorry, but life is a bitch guys, my classes are starting again and I had loads of papers to write over the break, so free time is lacking.  
> But anyway, hope you enjoy now that it's here!

_"And you can devastate my personal space; I never liked it anyway.”_   
_Powerless by Waterparks_

Cheryl is in the bedroom, standing in front of a big mirror, there’s some accumulated dirt on the glass but she runs her hand over to clean part of it so her reflection is clear and inspects the cuts on her face. They are superficial, the wound on her lip is smaller, but the one on her cheek is still bleeding a little, swollen and red all around it that she knows it’s going to turn purple; the cut is not too bad though, not too deep. She presses the spot with a piece of cloth to clean the blood, wincing a bit at the contact.

The haunting images of what happened flicker through her mind again, but she shakes them off. Ignoring the throb rising in her throat, she takes a deep breath. Even if Cheryl’s still in shock, she pulls herself together as best as she can.

They are alive. That’s what matters.

She feels herself shiver, it’s more because of the cold here, and the wet clothes don’t help. The rain keeps falling outside, lightning is not so frequent, but she can still see the flashes through the window and hear the following thunder in the distance.

Toni found two flashlights somewhere, Cheryl didn’t ask, so she lights the room with one of them, stepping away from the mirror.

It’s a large room, a queen bed with white sheets, expensive-looking furniture adorn the place and a big window facing the street. There’re three doors: the one that leads to the corridor, the other leading to a bathroom and then another to a big closet.

Cheryl walks up to the window, looking down she can see the zombies there, some of them still huddled up in the front door, but the street is full of them as well. Her stomach drops, hoping that until tomorrow most of them move along, or else they won’t be able to leave.

She closes the curtains tightly just in case, so no one can see any movement inside, Cheryl still doesn’t know what exactly happened to the others and if they’ll look for her and Toni, or if they are even still alive or not, though she has a pretty good idea of what happened to Matt.

As the thought enters Cheryl’s mind, her eyes drift over to the bathroom door.

Over the loud noise of the rain hitting the ground outside, she can hear the sound of water inside the bathroom, probably the sink, as she walks up to it.

On their many others searches in the condo, they realized some houses have their own water tank, and they were very pleased to find out the most of them were full, meaning they had running water. So whenever they came here before, someone would get back in touch with a shower, since they don’t get to do that anymore as often. And it looks like this house is one of them.

When Cheryl stops at the door she sees Toni in front of the sink, scrubbing her hands hard under the water, trying to get rid of the dirt and blood stained on her skin.

She just watches for a second, Cheryl’s mind drifting back to what Toni said, _it’s not my blood._ There’s only one other possibility to whose it was, and with that much blood-

“I had to.” Toni’s voice interrupts her thoughts, she is now staring at Cheryl’s reflection through the mirror and Cheryl meets her eyes. “He was coming at me.”

“Toni-”

“He would’ve killed me if I didn’t first.”

“Toni,” she takes half a step into the bathroom, making sure to look Toni in the eyes even if it’s her reflection, “I believe you.”

Toni nods and looks away, inhaling deeply as if to steady herself, and shrugs. “Or maybe I wanted to,” she laughs bitterly, but Cheryl can tell it’s hollow. “I was _so_ mad.”

Her eyes are fixed on Toni. Cheryl is alert, listening, receptive, and she wants to shift closer, but she doesn’t know if it’ll be well-received. So instead she just leans against the doorjamb, waiting.

“He was out of his mind and furious, and I was afraid he’d do something to you.” Toni says, there’s a moment of silence where she pauses a little, seeming to realize what she’s said a second later, she lifts her eyes back to look at Cheryl and starts to backpedal, “I mean… I couldn't risk getting back without you, I bet Jason would be super upset and I couldn't take that load of guilt on my back, you know.”

Toni looks a little flustered and when Cheryl just arches an eyebrow at her, she lets her gaze fall from Cheryl’s eyes again to look down at the sink. Toni clears her throat and it seems like that dark atmosphere around them is back before it had time to completely go away.

Toni sighs and tightens her fingers around the edge of the countertop, “Maybe that’s why I wanted to split and I didn’t want you near him.” She swallows thickly and closes her eyes, “Or I just didn’t want you to see it.”

 _God_ , Cheryl wants to say something but she doesn’t want to interrupt and risk Toni stop talking. It feels like Toni needs this after what happened today, needs to let it all out. Get it out of her chest.

Cheryl watches as Toni draws in a slow, deep breath and lets it out in a staggered rush of air. “But also I was scared he would follow us to the house, what if killed someone there? I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t risk it, Cheryl… I’m just so fucking tired of losing people.”

The words seem to have died in Cheryl’s throat, her body is shivering from the cold, but it could also be just because of the whispered defeat Toni says the last sentence with. Cheryl’s throat tightens and burns, and her heart swells until it feels like it no longer fits inside her chest.

What could she even say to respond to that?

They fall into a silence.

Toni opens her eyes. She stares at herself in the mirror, her eyes lost and haunted. Cheryl hates that there’s nothing she can do for her, and all Toni’s said only served to create more questions swimming in Cheryl’s head.

Toni’s eyes move down to her shirt for a second and she announces, “I need to take these clothes off.”

“ _What?_ ” Cheryl blurts, her voice an octave higher and broken around the surge of emotions.

She moves past Cheryl to the bedroom and steps into the closet. Cheryl half follows her but before she even crosses the room, Toni’s voice fills it again. “This house has running water, I’m taking advantage of that and take a long, much needed shower.” Toni appears a moment later holding what looks like a towel, immediately heading for the bathroom without waiting for Cheryl’s response, quickly closing the door.

The silence filters back in again and Cheryl can only think _what the hell was that?_

Now alone, Cheryl breathes out heavily, moving to the small chair and settles down to remove her boots. Once they are off, Cheryl pulls her socks free with a grimace, wet shoes are the worst. She sighs pulling her still dripping jacket from her shoulders and places it on the back of the same chair so it can dry at least a little. Moving into the closet, she searches for some dry towels. She takes one and begins to pat herself down, pressing her face into the towels and then ringing out her hair. Cheryl’s pats down her clothes and then wipes her bare feet.

Cheryl can’t help but feel curious about what Toni’s said, or better, didn’t say. _I’m so fucking tired of losing people._ It was another vague offhand comment from Toni that Cheryl doesn’t know what to make of it.

She walks out of the closet holding some new change of clothes and a new towel and places them on top of a table, waiting for the bathroom to clear. There’s probably another one downstairs, but she doesn't want to risk it and be alone there.

Minutes later the bathroom door opens, Toni comes out wrapped in a damp towel. Her hair is dripping and a few drops of water are running down her neck, her collarbone, and disappearing between her breasts. _She took a towel but didn’t think of grabbing clothes?_ Cheryl has to take a deep breath to control her racing heart.

“I forgot the clothes,” Toni says quietly, stating the obvious.

"I can see that," she says back, willing her voice not to shake. Then she notices the gash on the side of Toni’s bicep, a little blood still oozing slowly from it. “You’re hurt.” Cheryl gasps dumbly, taking a step towards Toni.

“Yeah, I didn’t even feel it again ‘til I got into the shower.” She points to the closet door, clearing her throat. “I’ll put some clothes first.”

“Right, of course.” Cheryl stops, feeling herself blush.

Toni walks across the parquet floor and disappears into the closet, closing the door behind her. Shortly afterwards returning to the bedroom, her hair still wet, but no longer dripping, she’s wearing a grey sweatpants and a black t-shirt, clutching the towel to her injured arm.

“So, turns out some of it was my blood then.”

“Let me see.” Cheryl walks up to her and looks down at the cut on her arm, it’s a little deep and of course still bleeding, but not too much, “It’s definitely gonna need stitches.”

“Great,” Toni says plainly, pressing the towel again against the wound.

And Cheryl burns with the image of the lost look on Toni’s face when she was talking about what she did, how Cheryl can still see it in eyes right now.

“Are you okay though?” Cheryl asks hesitantly.

“Oh, yeah. I can just wrap something around it until we get back.”

“No, I mean… about everything else.” Cheryl focuses her gaze on the other girl’s face.

Toni frowns. “Yeah,” She answers slowly, when Cheryl just stares, not really believing her, Toni asks confused. “What?”

She doesn’t know if Toni will want to talk about it, but Cheryl can’t help herself, she never was the most patient of people, Toni can just tell her to fuck off if she doesn’t.

She mulls over in her head for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to ask, but Toni looks about to say something else, so Cheryl blurts out, “Who did you lose?”

Okay, maybe it’s not the subtlest she’s ever been.

Toni blinks quickly in surprise, her body going rigid. She opens and closes her mouth, but nothing comes out.

She shakes her head, “It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid if it affects you like this.” Cheryl keeps her voice soft as to not startle Toni again.

“Everybody has lost people in this apocalypse, Cheryl, I’m not special.”

Cheryl shrugs, “Tell me anyway.”

Toni holds her gaze for several long moments before she looks away, there’s a moment of silence and then she sighs, “It was a friend. He was… Jug and JB’s father, his name was FP. He…" Toni shakes her head, closing her eyes, "He died saving me.”

“Shit.” Cheryl mutters, moving a little bit closer to Toni like it's instinct. And Cheryl never noticed anything bad between Toni and Jughead or JB, but maybe they’re just good at hiding it so she asks hesitantly, afraid of the answer. “Do they… do they blame you?”

“No, no. They are angels, they don’t blame me, even though they-” _should._ Toni doesn’t say it, but it’s clear she thinks so.

“What happened?”

She swallows hard, “We were cornered.” Her voice is quiet as she slowly opens her eyes and Cheryl’s heart clenches seeing unshed tears there. “The walkers. They just came out of nowhere. It all happened so fast.”

“Where were you?” Cheryl asks.

“At a camp, basically on the other side of the country.” She replies, looking away again, “We were there for five months before we started traveling around. Our group was just one of the many others there. It was like a big shed. Sometimes military people came and gave us some food. Water. Clean clothes. But over time it stopped happening and we just had to look out for ourselves. We needed to go look for food, look for wood to make fire, all that.

“And then, one night there was this big herd of walkers that show up out of nowhere. For some reason I can’t even remember right now, me and FP weren’t near our tents, we heard screams all over the place, blood and bodies everywhere.” She clears her throat when her voice breaks a little, “The others managed to run to a car we had at the time, it was really such chaos they couldn’t go look for us. FP and I tried to run there but we kept stopping to help some people along the way, people who had it worst. And we almost made it, we were getting close to the car, but we ended up cornered by more than a dozen walkers.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“If we hadn't tried to help a couple of strangers...” she trails off, swallowing, “He stayed back so I could escape. I only managed to do so because the walkers were too busy literally eating him.” She says and bites hard on her bottom lip. Cheryl feels her heart ache for Toni, for the pain in her voice, for how hard Toni is trying to hide it like there aren’t tears in her eyes.

“I'm so sorry, Toni.” She whispers.

Toni looks down, rubbing the towel between her fingers. “And I know it's not… logically I know, but sometimes it just… it feels like it was my fault, like I killed him.”

"Toni," Cheryl says, grabbing her shoulders to make her look up. Toni just blinks at her, hopefully listening. "You _didn’t_ kill him, the zombies did. It wasn’t your fault.” She searches Toni’s eyes, taking a deep breath before continuing. “Look, death has a weird way of getting to you. It can make you think a lot of dark and irrational stuff, like thinking whatever you were doing when it happened somehow is related to it and sometimes it feels like it’s because of you and your actions, but it isn't. Okay? It isn’t. He saved you because he cared about you, it was his choice and it’s not a bad thing that you tried to help those people… It makes you human.”

Toni’s eyes study hers for long seconds and Cheryl holds her breath. And then Toni nods slowly, without moving her gaze away from Cheryl’s face. Toni managed to make it this far without dropping a tear, but her eyes are still filled with them.

She stares into Toni’s glossy eyes, the chocolate color all heated. It’s unsettling in the same way Bambi’s literal doe-eyes are.

And Cheryl has no idea what happens to her, she was just so tired and all she knows is that she’d do pretty much _anything_ right now to not have to listen to that much sadness in Toni’s voice – she can blame it on the rollercoaster of emotions today was later.

Cheryl is almost as surprise as the girl in front of her when she surges forward, gluing her lips to Toni's.

Toni freezes for a moment that honestly seems like hours, and before Cheryl could panic, she feels Toni tilting her head slightly melting into the kiss. Which is chaste at first, just a pressing of closed lips, with Cheryl’s hands curled into the collar of Toni’s shirt and on her neck; but as they both relax, their mouths separating for a moment before they rejoin a second later.

Their lips move against each other easily, without any deeper contact, but enough to make her heart leap. Toni’s lips are so soft, so inviting, Cheryl feels her body shudder.

She hears a small thud of the wet towel hitting the floor as Toni raises her hands to cups her cheeks as she pulls the redhead’s face closer. Toni slides her tongue between her lips, asking entrance. Cheryl gives it and whimpers when Toni takes it. She feels a pulse of want at the resulting noise that fights its way out of the back of Toni’s throat when the kiss deepens.

It’s that sound that jolts Cheryl into breaking it.

She pulls back dazedly to see Toni staring back at her with wide eyes, as her mouth hangs slightly open. Cheryl can feel Toni’s racing pulse under her fingertips as they stare at each other.

She snaps her hands away from Toni’s body like they’re burning as soon as it registers, stepping backwards unsteadily.

Toni lets her hands fall to her sides and snaps her jaw closed, “Uhm…”

Her gaze roves Toni’s face, her lips are a little red, shiny and swollen from the kiss. Cheryl snaps her eyes away, “I'm sorry. I don’t know why…” She clears her throat once, then twice, “I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine.” Toni interrupts her failed attempts to explain herself.

"Okay. I'll… uhm.” Cheryl blindly reaches for the towel and clothes as she backs. “I'm gonna go shower.”

Cheryl doesn’t spare her another glance, doesn’t give her time to say anything else, she runs into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

She stares ahead, her heart pushing against her ribs like it’s trying to escape. _What the fuck did I just do?_ She kissed her.

She kissed Toni.

Even though she was the one that initiated, it was so unexpected. She closes her eyes, leaning against the door and trying to steady her breath. She honestly doesn’t know why she did that; this whole thing has the potential to so much disaster and still…

God, she _liked_ it. Her lips still tingle and she swears her skin is on fire where Toni touched her. She’d gone dizzy the moment she’d pressed her lips against Toni’s. A simple kiss had never made her feel like that before, and now she thinks she might not forget it so soon.

Three weeks. She had done a pretty great job not letting her mind go _there_ up to that point. She was so careful not to let herself read into every moment of tension between them since they met.

What was she thinking? She wasn’t, clearly.

_Shower._

She needs a fucking shower to calm down. Looking around she notices the bathroom is illuminated by a flashlight Toni left on the countertop, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and her cheeks are still rosy red as she reaches up take off her clothes.

She swallows down her blush and forces herself to step into and turn on the shower, sighing as the water runs over her bruises and cuts. The water is cold but refreshing as it splashes over her cheeks and streams down her throat in thin trails. Cheryl cups her hands under the water and brings another wave to her face as if the clear her mind.

But she can’t help running the kiss over in her head. Too many times. She can’t deny her attraction to Toni even if she wanted to, not now, especially not after that kiss. But Cheryl was nothing if not a realist.

She can’t do this, can’t go there. At least she shouldn’t.

Cheryl can’t afford having to worry about someone else, or getting attached. She doesn’t want to. Or care about her more than to only keeping her alive if something bad happens, like today.

 _It’s not a big deal_ , she reminds herself, _just because you’re attracted to her, doesn’t mean you care._ Okay, it’s fine, she can handle that. _It doesn’t have to mean anything_.

Cheryl tries to focus on the way the water hits and runs over her body to keep herself from being consumed by thoughts of Toni’s lips, the hands on her cheeks. The way the lavender smell of the soap she using right now is the same she smelled when she stepped into Toni’s space. How her hand felt just over Toni’s sternum. Or what would have happened if she hadn’t pulled away…

Okay, this isn’t working.

And now her body is tense, she can’t relax. Her mind is alert, and when she closes her eyes under the water all she sees is Toni.

_Oh god._

A warmth spreads underneath her skin, one that she hasn’t felt in months, despite the cold shower. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize… she’s turned on. Arousal is a tight ball in her lower belly, sending a clenching jot down between her legs.

Her mind drifts on its own to the only way to get rid of this tension in her body and... _No._ She refuses to do that. Especially with the other girl just outside the door. No, absolutely not. She opens her eyes, willing herself to finish the shower already, using the water like a hook that yanks her out of her fantasy world.

When she’s finished, she rings out her hair and pats it with the towel from the stand until it’s no longer dripping and then she steps out from the shower. She dries herself quickly, running the towel over her body until the last bits of moisture are gone. After getting dressed: in a soft sweater and sweatpants, she hesitates before leaving the bathroom, slowly registering what she is feeling. She’s afraid. God damn it, she’s _afraid_.

This is ridiculous. So what if it’s probably going to be awkward? She can't live in this bathroom forever. And there’re bigger problems than a simple kiss awaiting them outside.

She takes the flashlight that Toni left there and turns the knob, pushing the door calmly and looking around the partially dark room, Toni isn’t there as she steps into the bedroom again, so she sits on the edge of the bed, next to the headboard, drying her hair. If she focuses enough, Cheryl can still hear the zombies banging on the door and walls downstairs and their weak grunts over the rain.

“Hey.”

She turns toward the bedroom door slowly to see Toni, holding a first aid kit on her hands, looking hesitant to come in. Cheryl feels her chest tighten at the sight of her, it’s her fault that Toni is apparently felling anxious to come near her, just like she was a minute ago.

“I found it in the other bathroom downstairs.” She murmurs. Cheryl sees there’s still a small amount of blood coming out of the cut on her arm.

“Come here,” she calls and pats the spot beside her on the bed, putting her awkwardness aside, “Let me help you with that.”

Toni walks slowly to the indicated place and hands her the white and red kit, and she notices a box of cookies on top of it.

“I took it from the kitchen, they had loads of bags of chips and cookies there. It couldn’t have been healthy, but better for us.” She says, sitting beside Cheryl, but leaving a generous distance between them that almost makes Cheryl fondly rolls her eyes.

Cheryl scoots closer to look at the gash again. “Alright, I can probably stitch it up for you. It won’t turn out pretty, but at least it’ll stop the bleeding.”

“Okay.” She agrees quietly. 

Cheryl places the box of cookies aside to open the kit and take the antiseptic and the needle and thread on its little plastic bag.

“We don’t have anything to numb it so… it’s going to hurt.” Cheryl warns, and Toni nods.

“I know, I’ll be fine.”

Cheryl moves even closer to her body. She’s trying not to look at Toni’s face directly, but it’s like heat is radiating off her form. Cheryl is so hyper-aware of her presence that she’s pretty sure she can feel her body tense up every time Toni makes the slightest shift beside her.

She takes a deep breath and focus on the wound. She cleans it first eliciting a small hiss from Toni and begins her work.

“Have you done this before?” Toni asks through gritted teeth.

“Yes.” Is the only answer she gets while Cheryl tries not to grimace in sympathy every time the needle goes under Toni’s skin.

It takes a few minutes until she’s finished and closing the knot. She inspects her work and it’s rough but at least it’s clean and closed. She takes the scissors from the kit and cuts the thread.

“It’ll probably leave a scar.” Cheryl tells her, finally glancing up at Toni’s face.

“It’s fine, I don’t care.”

Cheryl nods as she finishes applying the bandage around her arm. “All done. I can even give you a lollipop if you want.”

“Ha ha.” Toni retorts sarcastically, and Cheryl lets out a soft laugh. “I’ll have those cookies though, I’m fucking starving.”

“Don’t eat on the bed. You’ll get crumbs all over.” She takes the first aid kit placing it on the nightstand, as well as the flashlight, directing the flash to the ceiling so the whole room is illuminated by a dim light, before sliding to sit on the floor.

“Seriously?”

“Dead serious.”

Toni snorts but joins her on the floor, resting her back against the bed as well.

And the first bite Toni takes from a cookie she gets crumbs all over her shirt.

Cheryl laughs, “See, you eat like a child.”

“Oh shut up.” Toni says but she’s grinning too.

The moment Cheryl starts to eat, she realizes how hungry she is as well. Since the shower and now putting some strength back in her body, she already feels a lot better.

She keeps stealing sideways glances at Toni and hopes Toni isn’t noticing. Nothing else is said as they eat. Cheryl is beginning to wonder if their interactions are going to be harder now, always stuck with a little bit of awkwardness because of the kiss.

But then Toni clears her throat, turning her body to look at Cheryl.

“So, I was thinking,” Toni says fidgeting anxiously with her hands, cleaning them on her pants, “The walkers are still banging on the walls downstairs, they can get in anytime so I think it’s better if we both stay in only one room through the night.”

Cheryl can’t help but think it’s cute even though she herself feels just as awkward. She honestly had just assumed they were going to share the room anyway. She tries to remember, but Cheryl doesn’t think she’s ever saw Toni like this before today, fumbling with her words like she’s actually nervous.

“Is… that okay?”

“That depends,” Cheryl says turning to fully face Toni and smirks, “Do you talk in your sleep?”

Toni snorts softly. “No, can’t say that I do. Sweet Pea says I snore, but I still think he’s lying to mess with me.”

“Damn. I was looking forward to learn all your secrets.”

Toni doesn’t respond, just roves her eyes over Cheryl’s face, zeroing on her cheek. Cheryl feels her heart quicken as Toni unconsciously lifts her hand up to Cheryl’s cheekbone, running her thumb lightly over the small wound there.

"How..." she rasps, "How is your cheek?"

Cheryl, totally thrown off by the sudden contact, feels her breath catch, her mind going back to what happened minutes ago, and it takes a little longer to respond but finally she whispers, "Fine. It’s superficial, almost doesn't hurt anymore."

"Are you sure?" Toni asks.

“Yeah." Cheryl says. "Just gonna be a little ugly for a while."

Toni's eyes lift to lock with hers again and she says softly, "It’s literally impossible for you be to be ugly, Cheryl."

The silence begins to grow between them again. Before she could say anything, Toni, suddenly, as if realizing what she’s doing, jerks her hand back and clears her throat softly, letting her gaze fall away from Cheryl's. “Should we call it a night?” she asks.

Cheryl feels her shoulders slumping in disappointment, and then curses herself for even feeling it at all and tries not to let it show on her face. _It’s better this way._ She thinks, but apparently her body doesn’t agree with that judging by the wave of heat that rolled through Cheryl's body and curled low in her stomach a moment ago.

“S-sure.” She _hates_ that she stutters.

The truth is Cheryl is restless. She’ll probably offer to take the first watch, there’s no way she can sleep now. Her body feels like a livewire, buzzing and thrumming from everything that happened today.

Toni holds out her hand when she stands up.

She accepts the help and Toni grips Cheryl’s hand, firm and purposeful, and pulls her to her feet like it’s nothing.

“Thanks,” she breathes once she’s up.

And Toni is there, close, too close—her features, dark and dangerous, are razor sharp in Cheryl’s vision. Toni seems like is searching in her gaze, and Cheryl can feel the tension filling the space between them. She has no idea what Toni finds on her face but the next second her eyes shifts into something akin hungry.

And the fact that Toni staring at her _like that_ is doing something uniquely physical to her body, and she still isn’t sure that she wants to open that box, but somehow it feels inevitable now. Electricity cracks in the air between them again, that magnetic pull like fire scorching across the air between them, as neither say another word. Her gaze drops to Toni’s parted lips, straight teeth just barely visible behind them, as Toni leans in slightly.

She meets Toni’s gaze again when she stops just inches from Cheryl’s face, her lips. She doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, but there’s this fire in her eyes that seems to scream, _daring_ her to do something.

Well, Cheryl was never one to back out of a challenge. Her resolve is gone.

When it’s clear Toni is not taking this last step, Cheryl closes the distance between them, their lips meeting before she can change her mind about this.

She tastes like chocolate, the scent of the lavender soap filling her nose; it’s all making her head swim. Toni’s mouth is warm on hers and Cheryl already feels a little breathless.

Where their first kiss was almost chaste, soft and hesitant, a spur of the moment, this one is everything but. It’s not a light or gentle kiss. There’s no build-up. It’s messy and hard and hot, all passion, pent up desire and tension crushed down into the space where their lips meet.

Her mind screeches to a stop when Toni lets go of their still joined hands and brings one up to cradle Cheryl’s jaw as the other finds her hip, slipping under her sweater to touch the heated skin underneath, and Cheryl gasps at the sparks that rush through her at such a simple touch. The gasp means that her mouth is slightly open as their lips meet again, and Toni’s tongue swipes over her lower lip and her teeth follow to scrape over the sensitive skin. Toni takes her bottom lip between her teeth and bites hard, and god, Cheryl can feel it _everywhere_.

It’s like a dam has been broken and Cheryl slides her hands to rest against Toni’s skin, one on the side of her neck and the other threading through her hair, and she can feel Toni’s pulse hammering almost as hard as her own. All she can think about is leaning in, stepping forward, pressing their bodies impossibly close.

In a whirlwind few seconds Cheryl’s got her back against the wall, and the shock of hitting something hard makes her whimper into Toni’s mouth, arching into her.

Toni smirks into the next kiss, and Cheryl’s wrapped up, completely.

Her hands wander, pulling Toni closer by her shoulders, but it’s never enough. Cheryl just wants to be closer. She’s sure if it were possible, she would let Toni consume her just to be closer to her.

And she wants to finally let go. She _wants_ this, wants to let Toni press her to this wall and do whatever the hell to her until she’s not worried about anything anymore. But Cheryl knows herself too well, always overthinking and nothing can ever be that simple.

She just needs to make it clear, because this doesn’t change anything for when they come back to their groups- when they come back to the reality outside.

“Toni.” Cheryl gasps when the kiss is broken.

It takes a second for Toni to open her eyes and a few more for her to finally focus on Cheryl’s face. Toni keeps looking between her mouth and her eyes hungrily, which is making it really hard to focus on what she’s saying next. 

Cheryl swallows hard. “Toni, this… doesn’t change anything.” Her voice is hoarse so she clears her throat softly, and when Toni frowns, giving a confused look, she speaks again, “It doesn’t mean anything… okay?”

Toni peers at her strangely, her expression changes slightly, looking almost a little hurt by that, Cheryl can’t quite place it– but it can’t be, right? Cheryl tries not to dwell on it. And then Toni rearranges her expression, breathless, lips swollen and her eyes so dark as they study Cheryl intensely in the dim light of the bedroom.

Her gaze roams over Cheryl’s face in silence and Cheryl focus on their uneven breaths, on the rain outside, on the electric feeling of Toni’s hands still gripping the bare skin of her waist under the sweater. On anything but that little part of her brain saying Toni is going to back off and leave, but then she hears it. “Okay.” Toni whispers.

“Okay?” Cheryl lifts an eyebrow, trying to sound nonchalant and not like she’s flooded with relief, ‘cause _god_ , she wants Toni.

“Yeah, if that’s what you want.” Toni drops her gaze to Cheryl’s lips then, and if she looks anything like she feels, Cheryl can only imagine the desperate look on her face.

Toni’s eyes bounce back up and she sees the lightness that’s shining through the darkness of them and Cheryl doesn’t want to be anywhere but here. She takes the moment to lean in and brush their lips together again.

Toni doesn’t let go of her, but the hold she has on Cheryl feels a little lighter, and she wonders if Toni thinks Cheryl’s going to pull away again. She isn’t.

Cheryl reacts by threading her hands through Toni’s hair and kissing her harder, a deep, bruising kiss that makes every inch of Cheryl’s body flood with desire. Toni hungrily returns the kiss, eagerly parting her lips for Cheryl’s tongue.

Pushing off the door, Cheryl steers Toni backward to the bed, never once breaking the slow, comfortable string of kisses, until Toni’s knees hit the mattress and she sinks down; Cheryl follows into her lap, straddling her thighs.

Toni watches as Cheryl reaches for the hem of her own sweater and very unceremoniously shrugs out of it and throws it on the floor, she unclasps her bra and shrugs out of that, too and Toni’s eyes zero in on the movement, staring at Cheryl’s chest.

“Fuck,” Toni breathes, digging her nails into Cheryl’s thighs, probably hard enough to leave marks even through the sweatpants.

 _Yeah, I’m sure that convinced her._ Cheryl smirks, and takes Toni’s face between her hands connecting their mouths again, Toni’s moan swallowed by Cheryl’s lips.

Toni leans back a little and starts to kiss a line from her mouth to the edge of her jaw, down Cheryl’s neck, scorching a hot trail across her collarbone, sending white-hot jolts up Cheryl’s spine. Her skin feels alive everywhere Toni’s lips touch, and it makes Cheryl wet, hot with need.

Almost as if she knows, Toni shoots her a teasing look before she’s nipping her neck again. Cheryl doesn’t have time to be exasperated, not when Toni finally cups her breasts, stroking her nipples gently with her thumbs. Cheryl groans, her hands tighten into Toni’s skin, her nails digging into her shoulders.

Cheryl runs her hands down Toni’s shoulders, past her collarbone, her chest until she fists it around the end of her shirt.

“Off,” Cheryl mumbles, and Toni is scrambling to take her shirt off, Cheryl looks down to see she’s not wearing a bra and groans quietly. Cheryl only get a few moments to admire the body sitting under her before Toni leans forward again, crashes their mouths together in a hard, messy kiss.

One of Cheryl’s hands finds the back of Toni’s neck, the skin to skin contact making her eyes roll back as Toni tries to pull her closer yet, even if there’s hardly any space between them anymore.

Cheryl breaks them apart to leave a trail of open-mouthed kisses down the line of her throat. She bites down when she gets to Toni’s naked shoulder and Toni’s fingers grasp harder on her skin, a low moan leaving her mouth.

She is distracted by the feeling of Toni’s skin, so she doesn’t expect when Toni encircle her waist, twisting their bodies so that Cheryl is suddenly laying beneath her on the mattress, her head on the pillow.

“Toni…”

Toni grins, leaning down to dust kisses over Cheryl’s pulse point and down, while Cheryl ghosts her hands over Toni’s chest. She wants to explore everything, wants to feel all of her. As much as she can tonight.

“So fucking beautiful,” Toni’s voice is so raspy, so ridiculously sexy, and she says it so genuine that Cheryl’s heart thumps unevenly in her chest.

Toni’s mouth travels down the length of Cheryl’s torso, stopping for a few moments to pay extra attention to Cheryl’s nipples, she throws her head back when she feels Toni’s mouth on them, sucking indulgently until Cheryl is squirming.

“Fuck,” She moans and Cheryl can feel Toni smirking against her skin.

Toni continues the path with mouth after a while, kissing and nipping down Cheryl’s bare stomach. Her hands follow suit. She drags them through her body and hooks her fingers underneath the band of her sweatpants at her hips and Cheryl whimpers.

But then she stops to look up at Cheryl – her gaze is questioning. And _god_ , Cheryl is so turned on, she honestly doesn’t think she’s been more turned on in her life. There isn’t any other possible answer to this.

So she nods, biting her lip, and Toni pulls her pants and underwear down her legs slowly, Cheryl lifts her hips to help, kicking the offending piece off of her when it reaches her ankles.

Toni runs her hands up Cheryl’s legs, her hips, over the inside of her thighs, knocking them even further apart, her eyes following every movement of her hands,- Cheryl doesn’t even feel self-conscious, the sheer want on Toni’s face as she moves her eyes through her body is enough to quell the anxiety of being this exposed. Toni drags her gaze up, to look at Cheryl’s face again as she comes down to kiss Cheryl’s lips hard and sloppy, her hand squeezing the warm flesh of her inner thigh.

“Toni,” Cheryl cries out, tearing their mouths apart as Toni’s fingers stroke slowly down her folds. “Shit.”

Her fingers slide through the wetness there sending a shock through her entire system, racing up to the top of her head and down all the way to the tips of her toes. “Fuck, you’re so wet.” Toni rasps against Cheryl’s lips, her voice low and husky and Cheryl feels her body _burn_ again all over just at that.

“Yeah,” She shudders and grips at Toni’s ribs, trying to anchor herself somehow.

The pads of Toni’s fingers slowly circle her clit. Toni drags her mouth to Cheryl’s neck, nipping at her skin. Cheryl’s moans a little louder when the other girl rocks forward, rubbing her clit rhythmically, with purpose. Toni shifts, propping herself up by one arm and strokes Cheryl’s entrance with a finger. She locks eyes with her, pushing against but not in. Toni bites her lips, looking very pleased at having Cheryl spread open and at her mercy. 

“Toni… I fucking swear, if you don’t-”

It's like waving a red flag at a bull. Toni smirks as she enters Cheryl, pushing two fingers inside her right to the knuckles.

Yes, _fuck_ , finally, Cheryl thinks - because she feels like she’s going to explode if she doesn’t come soon,- as she jerks her own hips upward, enjoying the delicious drag of Toni’s fingers.

“Yeah, that’s...” Cheryl moans and she knows this isn’t going to last very long.

Toni presses closer to Cheryl, skin against skin, the muscles in her arm tensing and releasing, Cheryl has half a mind to wonder if the stitches she did on her arm might break but then Toni shifts her fingers just slightly, curling it up knocking her breath right out of her throat and any thoughts of injuries out of her mind. Cheryl squeezes her eyes shut.

The pleasure is almost overwhelming, erasing all the other feelings, reducing her world to just this, to just the heat of Toni’s body against her own. Her words are a jumbled mess being ripped from her tongue, a repeated sequence of _pleases_ and _fucks_. It’s heaven.

She’s so close already, hurtling towards her orgasm with haste, every shallow thrust making her clench. Cheryl wants to revel in this feeling, of dangling so close to the precipice as Toni picks up her pace slightly, sending a jolt of electricity through her body every time she grinds into her clit with the palm of her hand.

She feels kisses been placed along her clavicle, up her neck and finally on her lips. Cheryl opens her eyes.

And, _fuck_. Toni’s eyes are so dark, demanding. Cheryl’s on the edge, hot and aching, and when Toni leans down and bites on her bottom lip, it’s enough. She comes, crying out loudly, pleasure swelling and breaking over her like waves as her whole body shakes.

Bit by bit, the rushing in her veins settles and she becomes vaguely aware of Toni’s teasing fingers still trapped inside of her, gasping when she finally pulls out. Only once Cheryl’s breathing returns to normal does Toni rolls onto her back, lying down next to her.

“You good?” Toni asks, and she can fucking hear the smirk in her voice.

Cheryl's response is immediate: she swings a leg over Toni's waist and levers herself up to straddle her.

She stares at the brown eyes that look up at her. She’s beautiful in this light,- in any light really- absolutely gorgeous. Toni’s smirk turns into a grin, a lopsided, almost goofy smile and Cheryl has to squash the urge to kiss her until she’s breathless.

Cheryl feels eager. Eager to touch, taste, to hear everything coming out of Toni’s mouth, to give as much as she was given.

She learns Toni slowly though, almost scientifically: the way her breathing quickens when Cheryl kisses down between her breasts, the way her back arches when Cheryl presses her leg between her thighs and how Toni pushes her hips up at the feeling, the way she gasps at gentle kisses but moans deep and low when Cheryl bites down.

She’s filled with this urgency to touch every inch of Toni. She takes her time, skimming her fingertips across every dip and curve of Toni’s body until the other woman is squirming against the mattress. It’s much too scary how much she wants her, how insatiable she’s feeling right now. Cheryl chooses not to dwell on that, biting Toni’s rip bone instead, smiling wickedly as Toni gasps arching up, before moving down her body with purpose.

Just for once, Cheryl doesn’t want to care about anything. So right here, she forgets about the utter chaos of the world outside, the complications this could bring on her and Toni’s relationship, the dark clouds that normally hang over her every move.

She forgets about all of it.

Only caring about hearing the sounds coming out of Toni’s lips over and over and over…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohmy-


End file.
